The true derivation of cracker, notwithstanding all the evidence given before on the subject, is the original word for Quaker, which in Spanish is _cuacero_, first changed into _cuaker_ by the English, and again into cracker. From this we may learn that neither cattle-whips nor corn-cracking had any thing to do with the naming of these people.
These crackers have few local attachments; moving twice in a year does not inconvenience them; indeed, no earthly state of existence can be imagined freer from care and less fraught with toil than the one they lead. When settled, they are not fastidious about their habitations, as the mild climate does not require close quarters; a good shelter will subserve their purpose. Like birds of the air, they only want a roosting-place when night overtakes them. Their houses are mostly made of logs, notched to fit at the corners, the floors being oftentimes of earth, but usually boards sawed by hand. These tenements are scoured once a week, when the beds are sunned, and every thing turned out. The men are not always dressed in "store-clothes," with a corresponding outfit, but usually country-made cotton home-spun. The genuine cracker wears a broad-brimmed hat, braided from palmetto, a brown-jean coat and breeches, a deer-skin vest with the fur left on, and a pair of stout, useful cow-skin boots, or shoes. He supports a very unkempt mustache and whiskers, before which a Broadway dandy would shrink with the most intense disgust. This natural growth obscures a mouth well filled with teeth, which were nature's gift, and the handiwork of no dentist--from whence is kept a constant ejecting of tobacco juice. He always has a body-guard of dogs whenever and wherever you find him, the number varying according to his condition in life--the poorer the man, the larger the number of canines. These animals are very thin, whether from a deficiency in their master's larder, or the constant rambling life they lead, has not been exactly determined. Around his master's neck is suspended a flask of shot and powder-horn, while in his hands is a rifle named "Sure-fire," which he says was never known to flicker, warranted to bring down any game within a range of two hundred yards, running or flying. These people, like the patriarchs of old, have large families, which require about the same attention as puppies or kittens. When night comes the children curl up in almost any corner to sleep, and at dawn of day, when the early songsters dash the dew-drops from the grass and flowers, they are out hunting for berries, or watching the birds building their nests, that they may know where to find the eggs, in which enterprise they are experts.