A Hunters' bivouac under the shadows of a Mississippian forest, in a spotwhere the trees stand unthinned by the axe of the woodman.It is upon the Arkansas side of the great river, not far from the town ofHelena, and in the direction of Little Rock, the capital of that State.The scene is a small glade, surrounded by tall cottonwood trees, one ofwhich on each side, conspicuously "blazed," indicates a "trace" of travel. It isthat leading from Helena to a settlement on the forks of the White River andCaché.The time is a quarter of a century ago, when this district of countrycontained a heterogeneous population, comprising some of the wildest andwickedest spirits to be found in all the length and breadth of the backwoodsborder. It was then the chosen home for men of fallen fortunes, lawyers andland speculators, slave-traders and swindlers, hunters, who lived by thepursuit of game, and sportsmen, whose game was cards, and whose quarryconsisted of such dissolute cotton planters as, forsaking their homes inMississippi and Tennessee, had re-established themselves on the fertilebottoms of the Saint Francis, the White and the Arkansas.