This book, except that portion of it illustrating the life and adventures of Wilburn Waters, the great hermit hunter and trapper, comprises a series of articles written for a weekly newspaper, partly for pastime, and partly to preserve for the use of the future historian a few facts connected with the early settlement of Southwestern Virginia, and which otherwise might have been lost. These facts, together with attempted descriptions of various localities, and all that the book contains, have the merit at least of being true. Being thus hastily thrown together, without revision or systematic arrangement, the author's only apology is, that it reappears in this form at the urgent solicitation of a great number of persons who read the articles as they appeared in the Abingdon Virginian, and who thought them worthy of preservation. With no further apology or explanation, this little volume of "multifarious small things" is thrown into the tide of current literature, not without hope that it may afford a few hours' pleasant pastime at the fireside of the mountaineer, and some of its facts form the nucleus of a much more comprehensive work by an abler pen, embodying the history of beautiful Southwestern Virginia.