Narrative of the adventures of Zenas Leonard

Zenas Leonard left his parents’ home in Pennsylvania in the early 1830’s to seek his fortune in the West. They did not hear from him for more than five years, and he was presumed dead. Then one day he showed up at their door, fresh from the Rocky Mountains. Everyone was eager to hear his story, so he wrote it down, first publishing part of it in a local newspaper, and later the entire account as a book. Leonard had been living as a mountain man, completely cut off from civilization, surviving for years just with his gun and traps. Although he was clearly brave and manly, Zenas did miss home: > "I could not sleep, and lay contemplating on the striking contrast between a night in the villages of Pennsylvania and one on the Rocky Mountains. In the latter, the plough-boy's whistle, the gambols of the children on the green, the lowing of the herds, and the deep tones of the evening bell, are unheard; not a sound strikes upon the ear, except perchance the distant howling of some wild beast, or war-whoop of the uncultivated savage--all was silent on this occasion save the muttering of a small brook as it wound its way through the deep cavities of the gulch down the mountain, and the gentl