...expert hunter, raftsman and flatboatman, an experience which was useful in his later military career. In 1835, when about to join a party of trappers and hunters to the Rocky mountains, he heard of Gen. David Crockett 's expedition to aid the struggle for the independence of Texas, and immediately started for Nacogdoches, the place of rendezvous. He arrived too late, but pushed on alone as far as the Brazos river...