Why is this so? In the wisdom and economy of creation every created thing represents a design for a use. The soil and climate of the tropical and semi-tropical regions of the earth produce and mature all, or very nearly all of the necessaries and luxuries of human life. But human beings of different races and different capacities fill up the whole earth. The capacity to build a fire and fabricate clothing is given only to man. Was the element of fire and the material for clothing given for any but man's use? This enables him to inhabit every clime. But the capacity to produce all the necessaries and luxuries of life is given only to a certain portion of the earth's surface; and its peculiar motions give the fructifying influences of the sun only to the middle belt of the planet. The use of this organization is evidenced in the production of this belt, and these productions must be the result of intelligently directed labor.

The peculiarity of the physical organization of the white man makes it impossible for him to labor healthfully and efficiently for the greatest development of this favored region. Yet his wants demand the yield and tribute of this region. His inventive capacity evolved sugar from the wild canes of the tropics, than which nothing is more essential to his necessities, save the cereals and clothing. He fabricated clothing from the tropical grass and tropical cotton, found the uses of cassia, pimento, the dye woods, and the thousand other tropical products which contribute to comfort, necessity, and luxury; advancing human happiness, human progress, and human civilization.

The black man's organization is radically different. He was formed especially to live and labor in these tropical and semi-tropical regions of the earth; but he is naturally indolent, his wants are few, and nature unaided supplies them. He is uninventive, and has always, from creation down, lived amid these plants without the genius to discover, or the skill and industry to develope their uses. That they are used, and contribute to human health and human necessities, is abundant evidence of Divine design in their creation.

The black man's labor, then, and the white man's intelligence are necessary to the production and fabrication, for human use, of these provisions of Providence. This labor the black man will not yield without compulsion. He is eminently useful under this compulsion, and eminently useless, even to himself, without it. That he was designed to obey this authority, and to be most happy when and where he was most useful, is apparent in his mental and moral organization. By moral I mean those functions of the nervous system which bring us in relation with the external world. He aspires to nothing but the gratification of his passions, and the indulgence of his indolence. He only feels the oppression of slavery in being compelled to work, and none of the moral degradation incident to servility in the higher or superior races. He is, consequently, more happy, and better contented in this, than in any other condition of life. His morals, his bodily comforts, and his status as a man, attain to an elevation in this condition known to his race in no other.

All the results of his condition react upon the superior race, holding him in the condition designed for him by his Creator, producing results to human progress all over the world, known to result in an equal ratio from no other cause. The institution has passed away, and very soon all its consequences will cease to be visible in the character of the Southern people. The plantation will dwindle to the truck-patch, the planter will sink into the grave, and his offspring will degenerate into hucksters and petty traders, and become as mean and contemptible as the Puritan Yankee.

In the two hundred years of African slavery the world's progress was greater in the arts and sciences, and in all the appliances promotive of intelligence and human happiness, than in any period of historical time, of five centuries. Why? Because the labor was performed by the man formed for labor and incapable of thinking, and releasing the man formed to think, direct, and invent, from labor, other than labor of thought. This influence was felt over the civilized world. The productions of the tropics were demanded by the higher civilization. Men forgot to clothe themselves in skins when they could do so in cloth. As commerce extended her flight, bearing these rich creations of labor, elaborated by intelligence, civilization went with her, expanding the mind, enlarging the wants, and prompting progress in all with whom she communicated. Its influence was first felt from the Antilles, extending to the United States. In proportion to the increase of these products was the increase of commerce, wealth, intelligence, and power. Compare the statistics of production by slave-labor with the increase of commerce, and they go hand in hand. As the slave came down from the grain-growing region to the cotton and sugar region, the amount of his labor's product entering into commerce increased four-fold. The inventions of Whitney and Arkwright cheapened the fabric of cotton so much as to bring it within the reach of the poorest, and availed the world in all the uses of cloth.

The shipping and manufacturing interests of England grew; those of the United States, from nothing, in a few years were great rivals of the mother country, and very soon surpassed her in commercial tonnage. Every interest prospered with the prosperity of the planter of the Southern States. His class has passed away; the weeds blacken where the chaste, white cotton beautified his fields; his slave is a freedman—a constitution-maker—a ruler set up by a beastly fanaticism to control his master, and to degrade and destroy his country.

This must bear its legitimate fruit. It is the beginning of the end of the negro upon this continent. Two races with the same civil, political and social privileges cannot long exist in harmony together. The struggle for supremacy will come, and with it a war of races—then God have mercy on the weaker! The mild compulsion which stimulated his labor is withdrawn, and with it the care and protection which alone preserved him. He works no more; his day of Jubilee has come; he must be a power in the land. Infatuated creature! I pity you from my heart. You cannot see or calculate the inevitable destiny now fixed for your race. You cannot see the vile uses you are made to subserve for a time, or deem that those who now appear your conservators, are but preparing your funeral pyre.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE NATCHEZ TRADITIONS.

Natchez—Mizezibbee; or, The Parent of Many Waters—Indian Mounds—The Child of the Sun—Treatment of the Females—Poetic Marriages—Unchaste Maids and Pure Wives—Walking Archives—The Profane Fire—Alahoplechia —Oyelape—The Chief with a Beard.

The little city of Natchez is built upon a bluff some three hundred feet in elevation above the Mississippi River, and immediately upon its brink. It receives its name from a tribe of Indians once resident in the country; and who were much further advanced in civilization than their more warlike neighbors, the Choctaws and the Chickasaws. The country around is hilly and beautiful, fertile and salubrious. The population was intelligent and refined, and was remarkable for having more wealth than any community outside of a large city, in the United States, of the same amount of population. The town of Natchez (for, properly speaking, it is no more) consists of some three or four thousand inhabitants, and has not increased to any considerable extent, for many years.

Beyond the river, in Louisiana, is an alluvial plain extending for fifty miles, through which meander many small streams, or bayous, as they are termed in the language of the country. Upon most of these the surface of the soil is slightly elevated above the plane of the swamp, and is remarkably fertile. Most of these were, at the commencement of the late war, in a high state of cultivation as cotton plantations. As in many other places, the river here has changed its bed by cutting off a large bend immediately opposite the town, creating what is known as Lake Concordia. This lake was formerly the bed of the river, and describes almost a complete circle of some twelve miles in diameter. On both sides of this lake beautiful plantations, with splendid improvements, presented a view from the bluff at Natchez extremely picturesque when covered with luxuriant crops of corn and cotton. The fertility of the soil is such that these crops are immensely heavy; and when the cotton-plant has matured its fruit, and the pent-up lint in the large conical balls has burst them open, exposing their white treasure swelling out to meet the sun's warm rays, and the parent stock to the first frost of autumn has thrown off her foliage, and all these broad fields are one sheet of lovely white, as far as the eye can view—the scene is lovely beyond description; and when the same rich scene was presented extending along the banks of the great river, with the magnificent steamers resting at the wharf below, and others cleaving the current in proud defiance of the mighty volume of hurrying waters—the splendor and magnificence of the whole sublimated the feelings as we viewed it in wonder.

The river, the bluff, and the lake are there; but waste and desolation frown on these, and the fat earth's rich fruits are yielded no more. Fanaticism's hot breath has breathed upon it, and war's red hand (her legitimate offspring) has stricken down the laborer; tillage has ceased, and gaunt poverty and hungry want only are left in her train.

When the great La Salle moored his little fleet at the foot of this bluff, ascended to its summit, and looked over this then forest-clad plain, did he contemplate the coming future of this beautiful discovery of his genius and enterprise? When he looked upon the blue smoke curling above the tall tree-tops along the lake, in the far distance, as it ascended from the wigwams of the Natchez, the wild denizens of this interminable forest, did his prophetic eye perceive these lovely fields, happy homes, and prosperous people, who came after him to make an Eden of this chosen spot of all the earth? and did it stretch on to contemplate the ruin and desolation which overspreads it now? How blest is man that he sees not beyond to-day!

Here he first met the Natchez, and viewed with wonder the flat heads and soft, gazelle eyes of this strange people. They welcomed his coming, and tendered him and his people a home. From them he learned the extent of the great river below, and that it was lost in the great water that was without limit and had no end. These Indians, according to their traditions, had once inhabited, as a mighty nation, the country extending from near the city of Mexico to the Rio Grande, and were subjects of the Aztec empire of Mexico. They had been persecuted and oppressed, and determined, in grand council, to abandon the country and seek a home beyond the Mizezibbee, or Parent-of-many-waters, which the word signifies.

Their exodus commenced in a body. They were many days in assembling upon the east bank of the Rio Grande; and thence commenced their long march. They abandoned their homes and the graves of their ancestors for a new one in the lovely region they found on the hills extending from the mouth of the Yazoo to Baton Rouge. Their principal town and seat of empire was located eleven miles below Natchez, on the banks of Second Creek, two miles from the Mississippi River. It is a delightful spot of high table-land, with a small strip of level low-land immediately upon the margin of the dimpling little stream of sweet water. Upon this flat they erected the great mound for their temple of the Sun, and the depository of the holy fire, so sacred in their worship. At each point of the compass they erected smaller mounds for the residences of their chief, or child of the Sun, and his ministers of state. In the great temple upon the principal mound they deposited the fire of holiness, which they had borne unextinguished from the deserted temple in Mexico, and began to build their village. Parties went forth to establish other villages, and before a great while they were located in happy homes in a land of abundance. They formed treaties of amity with their powerful but peaceable neighbors, the Choctaws, and ere long with the Chickasaws and other minor tribes, east, and below them, on the river, the Tunicas, Houmas, and others; for the country abounded with little bands, insignificant and powerless.

These Indians revered, as more than mortal, their great chief, whom they called the child of the Sun. They had a tradition that when they were a great nation, in Mexico, they were divided into parties by feuds among their chiefs, and all their power to resist the aggressions of their enemies was lost; consequently they had fallen under the power of the Aztecs, who dominated them, and destroyed many of their people. Upon one occasion, when a common enemy and a common suffering had made them forget their quarrels, they were assembled for council. Suddenly there appeared in their midst a white man and woman, surrounded with a halo of light coming directly from the sun. They were all silent with awe when this man spoke, and with such authority as to make every chief tremble with fear. They bowed to him with reverence, and he professing to be weary with his long journey, they conducted him with his wife to a lodge, and bade them repose and be rested. The chiefs, in the darkness of the night and in silence, assembled, while the celestial pair slept, conscious of security. After long and close council, they determined to proffer the supreme authority of the nation to this man, sent to them by the sun. When this determination had been reached, the chiefs, in a body, repaired to the house occupied by their mysterious visitors and, arousing them from sleep, they formally tendered to the man the crown and supreme authority over the chiefs, all their villages, and all their people. At first he refused, asserting that he knew their hearts; they carried hatred of one another, and that they would come to hate him; then they would disobey him, and this would be death to all the Natchez. Finally yielding to the importunities and earnestly repeated protestations of a determination to obey him and follow his counsels implicitly, he agreed to accept the crown upon certain conditions. These were: first and paramount, that the Natchez should abandon their homes and country, and follow him to a new home which he would show them; and that they should live and conform strictly to the laws he would establish. The principal of these were: the sovereign of Natchez should always and forever be of his race, and that if he had sons and daughters, they should not be permitted to intermarry with each other, but only with the people of the Natchez. The first-born of his sons should be his successor, and then the son of his eldest daughter, and should he have no daughter, then the son of his eldest sister, or in default of such an heir, then the eldest son of the nearest female relative of the sovereign, and so in perpetuity.

So soon as he was inaugurated chief and supreme ruler, he went out in the midst of the assembled multitude and called down in their presence fire from the sun; blessed it and made it holy. He created a guard of eight men, made them priests and gave them charge of the fire, and bid them, under pain of death, to preserve and keep alive this holy fire. They must tend it day and night and feed it with walnut wood, and in their charge it went before the moving host to where he had promised they should find a new and better home than the one they were leaving.

Another tradition says, they were aiders of the Spaniards in the conquest of Mexico, and that these became as great persecutors of their people as the Aztecs. But from many of their traditions connected with their new home which extended back far beyond the conquest of Mexico, it is thought by historians that this tradition alludes to some other war in which they took part against their oppressors. They were remarkable for their size and symmetry of form of their men; but like all the race, they made slaves of their women, imposing every burden from the cultivation of their fields to the duties of the household—the carrying of heavy burdens and the securing of fuel for winter. These labors served to disfigure and make their women to appear prematurely aged and worn, and they seemed an inferior race when compared with the men.

The laws imposed by their chief of the sun were strictly obeyed. They compelled the telling of truth on all occasions; never to kill, but in self-defence; never to steal, and to preserve inviolate the marriage-vow. The marriage ceremony was poetic and impressive. No girl ever dreamed of disobeying her parents in the choice of a husband; nor was elopement ever heard of among them; nor did the young man presume to thrust himself upon a family to whom, or to any member of whom, he was not acceptable. But when the marriage was agreeable to the families of both parties and was consequently determined upon, the head of the family of the bride went with her and her whole family to the house of the bridegroom, who there stood with all his family around him, when the old man of the bridegroom's family welcomed them, by asking: "Is it thou?" "Yes," answered the other ancient. "Sit down," continued the other. Immediately all were seated, and a profound silence for many minutes ensued. Then the eldest man of the party bid the groom and bride to stand up, when he addressed them in a speech in which he recapitulated all the duties of man and wife; informed them of the obligations they were assuming, and then concluded with a lecture of advice as to their future lives.

When this ceremony was concluded, the father of the bridegroom handed to his son the present he was to make to the family of the bride. Then the father of bride stepped up to the side of his daughter, when the groom said to the bride: "Wilt thou have me for thy husband?" The bride answered: "With all my heart; love me as I will love thee; for thou art my only love for all my life." Then holding the gift above her head, the groom said: "I love thee; therefore I take thee for my wife, and this is the present with which I buy thee," and then he handed the present to her parents. Upon his head he wore a tuft of feathers, and in his hand a bow, emblematic of authority and protection. The bride held in one hand a green twig of the laurel-tree, and in the other an ear of corn—the twig indicated she would preserve her fame ever fair and sweet as the laurel leaf; the corn was to represent her capacity to grow it and prepare it for his food, and to fulfil all the duties of a faithful wife. These ceremonies completed, the bride dropped the ear of corn which she held in her right hand, and tendered that hand to the bridegroom, who took it and said: "I am thy husband." She replied: "I am thy wife." The bridegroom then went round and gave his hand to every member of the family of his wife. He then took his bride by the arm and led her around and she took the right hand of all the family of the bridegroom. This done, he walked with her to his bed, and said: "This is our bed, keep it undefiled."

There obtained among these primitive beings a most curious and most disgusting custom. The young marriageable females were permitted to prostitute themselves for gain, in order to provide a marriage portion; and she who could thus enrich herself was the most distinguished and the most sought. But after marriage, she was compelled to purity, both by their laws and by public sentiment; and in all the intercourse of the French with them, no instance of infidelity was ever known in a wife.

The great sun was indeed their Lycurgus. If before his advent among them they had any laws, these had become obsolete, and his edicts adopted universally. Their traditions represent him as living to extreme old age, seeing his descendants of the fourth generation. These were all little suns, and constituted the nobility of their nation, which extended at one time to the country above, as far as St. Louis and across to the Wabash. These traditions were carefully kept. Every two years there were selected from the most intelligent boys of the nation ten, to whom these traditions were carefully taught by the depositories of them who had kept them best for the greatest time. They were careful to exact that no word or fact should be withheld, and this lesson was daily taught until the boy was a man, and every legend a familiar memory. These he was compelled to repeat daily lest the memory should rust, and for this purpose they went forth to all the villages repeating all of these legends to all the people.

There were others selected in like manner to whom the laws were taught as the traditions, and in like manner these were taught the people. In every community there was a little sun to administer these laws, and every complaint was submitted to him, and great ceremony was observed at every trial, especially criminal trials. The judge, or little sun, purified himself in the forest, imploring the enlightenment of the Good Spirit, and purging away the influence of bad spirits by his purification; and when he felt himself a fitted tabernacle of pure justice, he came forward and rendered his judgment in the presence of all the villagers of his jurisdiction, whose attention was compulsory.

It was one of the laws established in the beginning of the reign of the Great Sun, that his posterity should not marry inter se, but only with the common people of the nation. This custom was expelling the pure blood of royalty more and more every generation, and long after the arrival of the Natchez upon the Mississippi, the great and little suns were apparently of the pure blood of the red man. Their traditions, however, preserved the history of every cross, and when Lasalle found these at Natchez and the White Apple village, nearly every one could boast of relationship to the Great Sun. At that time they had diminished to an insignificant power, and were overawed by their more numerous and more powerful neighbors, the Choctaws and Muscagees or Alabamas. Their legends recorded this constant decline, but assigned no reason for it. They could now not bring more than two thousand warriors into the field. Gayarie says not more than six hundred; but those contemporaneous with planting the colony of Orleans say, some two thousand, some more, and some estimate them as low as the number stated in that admirable history of Louisiana whose author is so uniformly correct. And here let me acknowledge my obligations to that accomplished historian, and no less accomplished gentleman, for most of the facts here stated, and if I have used his own language in portraying them to a great extent, it was because it was so pure and beautiful I could not resist it, the excuse the Brazilian gave for stealing the diamond.

With regard to these people, their mode of life was that of most of the other tribes. They lived principally by the chase; their only cultivation was the Indian corn, pumpkins, and a species of wild beans or peas, perfectly black, until their intercourse with the French, and then they only added a few of the coarser vegetables. From whom they derived the pumpkin is not known.

Their wars were not more frequent or more destructive than those of their neighbors; and their general habits were the same. Still they were going on to decay, and they contemplated with stolid calmness their coming extinction. They felt it a destiny not to be averted or avoided by anything they could do, and were content with the excuse of folly for all its errors and sins. It is the will of God, or the Great Spirit, as the Indian phrases it. They were more enlightened than their neighbors, as historians have stated, because, I suppose, they were more superstitious. They bowed to fate, the attribute of superstition everywhere, and made no effort at relief from the causes of decay.

Their religion, like all the aborigines of the continent, consisted in the worship of the Great Spirit typified in the sun, to whom was addressed their prayers and all their devotion. The sacred fire was the emblem on earth; their Great Sun had brought it from the sun and given it as holy to them to be forever preserved and propitiated by watching and prayer. In every village and settlement they erected mounds upon which the temple of the sun was built, and where was deposited the sacred fire. Mounds, too, were built for burying-places, and in these are now to be found in great abundance the flat heads and other bones of this remarkable people.

They had a tradition that an evil spirit was always tempting them to violate the laws, and the regulations of their religious belief. That at one time he had so nearly extinguished the holy fire in their temples, and the love of the sun in their hearts, that the Great Spirit came and fought with them against him, until finally he was conquered and chained in a deep cave, whence he still continued to send out little devils to tempt and torment their people. It was these who brought disease and death; these who tempted to lie, steal, and kill; disobedience in their wives when they refused to perform their duties or became bellicose, as wives sometimes will, of every people on earth. It was a trite saying, shut up the cave in your heart and smother or put out the bad spirit. It was a belief that these imps or little devils found much more easy access to the caves in the hearts of women than into those of men, and that they encouraged them to come and nestle there. Is the belief alone the Indian's? There are some within my knowledge whose experience at home might readily yield belief to this faith of the savage.

Their traditions, too, told them of the great waters coming over all the land, and destroying all the inhabitants except those who had boats; and that the latter were carried away by the waters and left by them on all the land that was permitted again to come above the waters; and that by that means people were planted everywhere. These traditions are quite as rational as most of the speculations as to how the earth was populated, especially that which we learn in the cradle, of Adam and Eve's mission.

It was death, by their law, to permit the holy fire to become extinguished in the temples. To prevent such a calamity, it was preserved in two temples at different points; when accidentally extinguished in one, it was to be obtained from the other; but not peacefully. The keepers must resist and blood must be spilt in order to obtain it. Soon after they became acquainted with the French, the fire was extinguished in the great temple at the White Apple village by the lazy watcher. Knowing his fate, he stealthily lighted it from profane fire. Great misfortunes following this, and shortly thereafter the loss of the holy fire in the other temple near the Grindstone ford, on the Bayou Pierre, in Claiborne County, Mississippi, they sought after the legal and holy manner to procure fire from the White Apple village. Yet the calamities continued. The watch who had suffered the fire to fail in the first temple, conscience smitten, confessed his sin and paid its penalty.

They now had only profane fire, and the whole nation was in the agonies of despair. The cause of all their calamities was now no longer a secret. They extinguished the profane fire, and in prayer, fasting, and continued oblations, they propitiated the sun to send them fire that was holy, to protect and preserve them. It was the folly of ignorance and superstition, and availed nothing; but, like all prayer, was considered a pious duty, though nothing was ever known to result therefrom, and nature moved steadily and undeviatingly forward in obedience to the fixed, immutable, and eternal laws affirmed by the all-wise Creator. There was gloom upon every brow and despair in every heart. The curse pronounced by the first Great Sun had come—destruction and death to all the Natchez—because of the extinction of the holy fire. At length a tree was stricken by lightning near the White Apple village temple, and set on fire. The men of the temple saw the answer to their prayers in this, and hastened to re-kindle the holy flame from this fire, so miraculously sent them from heaven. It was to them a miracle, because, though perfectly in obedience to natural laws, they did not comprehend them, and like unto all people under similar circumstances, all in nature is a miracle which they do not understand, and cannot satisfactorily explain. But there was no efficiency found in this, and the trouble went forward.

The French had come among them, and taught them the value and corrupting influence of money. Boats had ascended and descended the Great River, and communication, through this channel, had been established with Canada. They were grasping, by degrees, the lands, building forts and peopling the country. They had introduced the black man, and the wiser of the Natchez saw in the future the doom of their race. They saw the feuds fomented between the numerous tribes along the coast of the Mississippi by the French, and the destruction of these by bloody wars. They saw, too, to offend the French was sure to bring destruction upon the offending party. Their neighbors were made, through French influence, to fall upon and destroy them. The Chickasaws and Choctaws—great nations, having multitudes of warriors—were under the dominion of these pale-faced intruders, and they feared they might be turned upon them in an unsuspecting hour.

There was among the Natchez a mighty chief and warrior. He was of great stature and fame, being seven feet high and powerfully proportioned. He had a large beard, and was called the chief of the Beard, because he was the only man of all the tribe who had this facial ornament or incumbrance. He was a mighty warrior and was wise in counsel. He believed he saw great evil to the Natchez in the increase of the French and the extension of French power. He knew, and told his people, this was the foreboding of the extinction of the holy fire. He went forth with the chief of the Walnut Hills, named Alahoplechia, and the chief of the White Clay, Oyelape, among their neighbors of other tribes, the Chicasaws and Choctaws, preaching a crusade against the French; urging them to unite with the Natchez, the Homochittas, and the Alabamas, and to attack and destroy the last man of the French settlements at Mobile, Boloxy, Ship Island, and New Orleans, as they were mischievous intruders from across the Salt Lake, whence they were yearly bringing their people to rob them of their homes and appropriate them.

There had come to them red men from the Wabash and Muskingum, who bore to them the sad news of the encroachments of the pale-faces upon their people and their hunting-grounds. "Soon," said the bearded chief, who was the leading spirit of the mission, "these white faces will meet along the Great River. They will forget the arrow of truth and the tomahawk of justice. They will only know power and oppression. Then they will be mighty as the hurricane when the Great Sun hides his face in wrath and the tempest tears the forest. Who can resist him then? The holy fire has been sent again from heaven, from the Great Spirit, our God, the Great Sun. It tells us to save our people from this fearful destruction which comes with the white man. These pale-faces are cunning; they must not know of our union. We must not counsel long, or they will learn our intentions. We must strike at once. The Choctaws must strike at Mobile. At the same moment, Homochittas, Boloxies, and Homas, you must strike at Boloxi. The Chickasaws and the Natchez will fall upon New Orleans and Rosalie." (The latter is the Indian name for what is now Natchez.) His advice was startling, but unheeded. In order to precipitate a war, on his return with the chiefs who accompanied him and two warriors, they murdered a trading-party of French, at the hills where is now Warrenton, in Warren County, Mississippi.

This murder was communicated to the French who, under Bienville, were sent by Cordelac, then Governor of Louisiana, to take revenge, by waging war upon the Natchez. Bienville was hated by Cordelac, because he had refused the hand of his daughter, formally tendered him by her father. He only gave the young and sagacious commander a small force with which to wage this war—such an one as would have been overwhelmed at once had he attempted open field movements. Knowing this, he proceeded to an island opposite the village of the Tunicas, where he entrenched himself and invited a conference. Three spies were sent by the Natchez to reconnoitre; but they were baffled by Bienville with superior cunning. They were sent back as not the equals of Bienville, and with a message to the Great Sun that he must come with his chiefs, that he desired to establish trading-posts among them, and would only treat with the first in authority. They came with a consciousness that the French were ignorant of these murders, and were immediately arrested and ironed. Bienville told them at once of the murder, and of his determination to have the murderers and to punish them. He had the Great Sun, the Stung Serpent, and the Little Sun. The latter was sent to bring the heads of the murderers, and he returned with three heads; but Bienville, after examining these, told the chiefs they had treacherously deceived him, and that those were not the heads of the murderers. After a night's consultation they concluded it was impossible to deceive him, and in the morning confessed the whole truth, proposing to send Stung Serpent to bring the real murderers. But knowing the wily character of this chief and his influence with his tribe, he was not permitted to go. The young Sun was dispatched, and succeeded in bringing the chief of the Beard and the chief of the Walnut Hills, with the two warriors; but Oyelape had fled and could not be had. He had probed to the truth of the French expedition; and being guilty, cunningly and wisely made his escape.

The death sentence was passed upon these, and the two warriors were shot at once; but the two chiefs were reserved for execution to another day. Upon the sentence being communicated to them they commenced to chant the death-song of their people, which they continued to do throughout all the time, night and day, until led forth for execution.

The Great Sun, Stung Serpent, his brother, and all the other Indians were brought out to witness the execution. When the two condemned chiefs were brought forward, these witnesses of their death sang the death-song; but the chief of the Beard looked sternly at them, and defiantly at the executioners; and taking his position, turned to his people and, addressing them, said:

"Let there be joy in the hearts of the Natchez. A child is born to them of the race of their Suns. A boy is born with a beard on his chin. The prodigy still works on from generation to generation.' So sang the warriors of my tribe when I sprang from my mother's womb, and the shrill cry of the eagle, in the heavens, was heard in joyful response. Hardly fifteen summers had passed over my head when my beard had grown long and glossy. I looked around, and saw I was the only red man that had this awful mark on his face, and I interrogated my mother and she said:

"Let there be joy in the hearts of the Natchez! A hunter is born to them—a hunter of the race of the Suns. Ask of the bears, of the buffaloes, of the tigers, and of the swift-footed deer, whose arrows they fear most! They tremble and cower when the footstep of the hunter with the beard on his chin is heard on the heath. But I was born with brains in my head as well as a beard on my chin, and I pondered on my mother's words. One day, when a panther which I slaughtered had torn my breast, I painted my beard with my own blood, and I stood smiling before her. She said nothing; but her eye gleamed with wild delight, and she took me to the temple when, standing by the sacred fire, she thus sang to me:

"Let there be joy in the hearts of the Natchez; for a mighty chief, worthy of the race of their Suns, has been born to them in thee, my son—a noble chief with a beard on his chin. Listen to the explanation of this prodigy. In days of old a Natchez maid of the race of their Suns was on a visit to the Mobelians. There she soon loved the youthful chief of that nation, and her wedding-day was nigh, when there came from the big Salt Lake on the south a host of bearded men, who sacked the town, slew the red chief with their thunder, and one of those accursed evil spirits used violence to the maid when her lover's corpse was hardly cold in death. She found in sorrow her way back to the Natchez hills, where she became a mother, and lo! the boy had a beard on his chin, and when he grew old enough to understand his mother's words she whispered in his ear:

"Let there be joy in the hearts of the Natchez. In my first ancestor a long line of the first of hunters, chiefs, and warriors of the race of their Suns had been born to them with beards on their chins. What chase was ever unsuccessful over which they presided? When they spoke in the council of the wise men of the nation, did it not always turn out that their advice, whether adopted or rejected, was the best in the end? In what battle were they ever defeated? When were they known to be worn out with fatigue—with hardship, hunger or thirst, heat or cold, either on land or water? Who ever could stem as they the rushing current of the Father of rivers? Who can count the number of scalps which they brought from distant expeditions? Their names have always been famous in the wigwams of all the red nations. They have struck terror into the breasts of the boldest enemies of the Natchez; and mothers, when their sons paint their bodies in the colors of war, say to them:

"Let there be joy in the hearts of the Natchez. When the first chief of the Beard first trimmed the sacred fire in the temple, a voice was heard which said: 'As long as there lives a chief of the race of the Suns with a beard on his chin, no evil can happen to the Natchez nation; but if the white race should ever resume the blood which it gave in a bloody day, woe, three times woe, to the Natchez! Of them nothing will remain but the shadow of a name.' Thus spake the invisible prophet. Years rolled on, years thick on years, and none of the accursed white-faces were seen; but they appeared at last, wrapped up in their pale skins like shrouds of the dead, and the father of my father, whom tradition had taught to guard against the predicted danger, slew two of the hated strangers, and my father, in his turn, killed four.

"Let there be joy in the hearts of the Natchez. When I saw the glorious light of day there was born to them a great warrior of the race of their Suns—a warrior and a chief with a beard on his chin. The pledge of protection, of safety, and of glory stood embodied in me. When I shouted my first war-whoop the owl hooted and smelt the ghosts of my enemies, the wolves howled, and the carrion vultures shrieked with joy; for they knew their food was coming, and I fed them with Chickasaws' flesh and with Choctaws' flesh until they were gorged with the flesh of the red man. A kind master and purveyor I was to them—the poor, dumb creatures that I loved. But lately I have given them more dainty food. I boast of having done better than my father. Five Frenchmen have I killed, and my only regret in dying is, that it will prevent me from killing more.

"Sorrow in the hearts of the Natchez! The great hunter is no more. The wise chief is going to meet his fathers. The indomitable warrior will no more raise his hatchet in defence of the children of the Sun. O burning shame! He was betrayed by his brother-chiefs, who sold his blood. If they had followed his advice they would have united with the Choctaws, Chickasaws, and all the other red nations, and they would have slain all the French dogs that came prowling and stealing over the beautiful face of our country. But there was too much of the woman in their cowardly hearts. Well and good! Let the will of fate be accomplished. The white race will soon resume the blood which it gave, and then the glory and the very existence of the Natchez nation will have departed forever with the chief of the Beard; for I am the last of my race, and my blood flows in no other human veins. O Natchez, Natchez! remember the prophet's voice! I am content to die; for I leave no one behind me but the doomed, while I go to revel with my brave ancestors.

He stood up in proud defiance before the admiring French; his noble form expanded to its full proportions, hatred in his heart and triumph in his eyes. Facing his foes, he viewed the platoon selected to deal him his death, and lifted his eyes and hands to the sun. The officer gave the command, the platoon fired as one man, and the great chief of the Beard passed away.

This was the beginning of difficulties with the French, and also the commencement of the utter destruction of the Natchez. War succeeded war, until the last of this people, few in number, broke up from the Washita, whither they had fled for security years before, and went, as they fondly hoped, too far into the bosom of the deep West to be found again by the white-skins. But Clarke and Lewis found them high up on the Missouri, still preserving the holy fire, the flat heads, and their hatred of the white race. Their bones are even now turned up by the plough near the mounds of their making, and soon these mounds will be all that is left to speak of the once powerful Natchez. I have stood upon the great mound of their temple at the White Apple village, forty years ago, then covered with immense forest-trees, at the graves of the great grandfather and mother of my children. To these was donated, in 1780, by the Spanish Government, the land on which the temple and the village stood. It is a beautiful spot in the centre of a lovely and most picturesque country. It was here these Indians feasted the great La Salle and his party when descending the Mississippi. They were the first white men that had descended the river, and the first white men the Natchez had ever seen.

CHAPTER XX.

EXPLORATION OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.

Chicago—Crying Indians—Chickasaws—De Soto—Feast of the Great Sun— Cane Knives—Love-Stricken Indian Maiden—Rape of the Natchez—Man's Will—Subjugation of the Waters—The Black Man's Mission—Its Decade.

La Salle, who first discovered the mouth of the Mississippi River, was a man of most remarkable energy and enterprise. He had been engaged in commercial pursuits for some time in Canada; but, seized with the spirit of adventure—very probably inspired by the reports of the Jesuit missionaries, who were going and returning from the vast wilderness—and inspired with the belief (then common) that the rivers west, and particularly the great river found by De Soto, debouched into the Pacific Ocean, he determined to learn the truth, and projected and commenced the ascent of the St. Lawrence and the navigation of the lakes as a means of reaching the Mississippi. It required almost superhuman daring to undertake such an enterprise; but there was enough in La Salle to accomplish anything possible to human capacity. His followers, like himself, were fearless and determined and, with a few small boats, or skiffs, he commenced his perilous adventure. It was like walking in the dark over uncertain ground; for every step was over unexplored territory, the moment he passed the establishments of the Jesuits, who were then pioneering to propagate their creed among the aborigines of the new continent.

His first winter was spent on the spot, or in the immediate neighborhood of where Chicago now stands. Here he invited to his camp the neighboring Indians, and endeavored to learn as much as possible of the geography of the country he was about to explore. Parties were sent out with these Indians to ascertain if there was any stream or water-communication leading from Lake Michigan to the West, and which might connect it with the Mississippi. Sufficient of the language of the tribes about him had been acquired to establish a means of intelligent intercourse with them. They were curious to know the objects of the visit of the white strangers to their country. Always suspicious of strangers—supposing all, like themselves, treacherous and cruel—they kept on the alert and were chary of giving any information they might possess as to this, or any other matters about which the white men asked; but, watchful of their movements, and seeing from their explorations their intentions, they became convinced of the sincerity of their inquiries, and readily pointed out the portage dividing the waters of Chicago Creek and those of the Illinois River.

When the spring came, and the snows had melted away, and the boats were all over the portage, with the assistance of the savages, the expedition was renewed in the descent of the Illinois. The Indians had been so kindly treated, and so sincerely dealt with, that every suspicion that made them fear the whites was dissipated, and they were loath to part from them, and many accompanied the party until they were about entering the territory of hostile neighbors. Of these they seemed to entertain great fears, and every means of persuasion and warning were used to prevent their white friends hazarding themselves to the power of these enemies. When the last were to leave, they manifested more emotion than is usual with the savage, and one of La Salle's party more facetious than the Indian designated them the Crying Indians.

La Salle was a wise as well as a bold adventurer. His policy with all the tribes he encountered was kindness and truth. These were human beings, and he correctly judged influenced by the motives and impulses of men. They had never seen white men before, and there could be no cause of quarrel, and there was little in the possession of the whites, the use of which was known to the Indian to tempt his cupidity. He manifested no fears in approaching them. Their curiosity tempted them to come to him, and once met, his kindness and gentleness won them; and he experienced no opposition or trouble from any he met; but succeeded in gaining much information from his communications with them. When he reached the Mississippi he began to doubt the accepted theory of its discharging its waters into the Pacific, and upon reaching the mouth of the Missouri and counseling with the chief of the tribe he met there, he at once determined the speculation a delusion, and decided to prosecute his journey to the mouth of the mighty stream, now with almost irresistible impetuosity hurrying on his little flotilla. This chief by many signs and diagrams marked with his finger upon the sand of the beach, described the country out of which flowed the Missouri, and into which went the Mississippi, and seemed to comprehend at least the extent of its constantly accumulating waters and great length. Like all the other savages, he represented the dangers below as being too formidable for the small party of La Salle. He described the Natchez Indians and gave them a terrible character; then the monsters of the woods and the waters. He marked the form of the tiger, the bear, and the alligator and described them as aggressive and ferocious. Taking a handful of sand he scattered it on the boat's floor or bottom, and pointing to the separate particles, attempted to explain by this means the countless numbers of these Indians, and monsters of the country below. Here was his first information of the existence of the Natchez, but his information augmented as he descended the river. At the bluffs, where now is Memphis, he encountered the Chickasaws and learned of the visit of De Soto to that point, and of his death. These Indians warned him of the dangers he had to encounter. They had had trouble with De Soto and were chary of their intercourse with the whites, but manifested no hostility.

The next tribe of Indians seen was at the Walnut Hills, now Vicksburg. Their flat heads told him he had reached the country of that formidable nation, but he held no communication with them. Landing at the great bluff or Natchez, he found there quite a village. The natives approached him manifesting the kindest and most hospitable intentions. For some days he delayed, to learn as much as possible from these people in the observation of their character and the topography and peculiarities of the country they were inhabiting. Runners had been dispatched to the Great Sun at the White Apple village, to inform him of the advent of these pale-faced strangers, with beard on their chins. Like information was communicated to the towns on Cole's Creek and further in the interior. La Salle was furnished with pilots and requested to drop down to the White Cliffs, now known as Ellis' Cliffs, eighteen miles below Natchez, where a delegation would meet and conduct him to the White Apple village. These pilots caused the landing of the party at the mouth of St. Catharine's Creek, a point much nearer the village than the cliffs, and from whence it was much more easily approached. Thence they conducted them to the village and temple of the Great Sun. They came by surprise, and there was manifested some suspicions of the motive. But being informed it was the work of the pilots, all were satisfied and a messenger dispatched for the great escort awaiting the party at White Cliffs.

There were great preparations made for a solemn feast. Game in abundance had been collected: the meat of the deer and the bear and every variety of the wild-fowl peculiar to the country and season. These were spread out upon tables made of the wild-cane, placed upon poles sustained by posts driven into the ground, and covered with neatly dressed skins of the bear, elk, and buffalo. There were fish in abundance, the paupaw and the berries which grew abundantly in the forest. The Great Sun led La Salle to the centre of the square formed by the tables, where one had been prepared for him and the great ruler of the Natchez. Rude seats were arranged only for these two. The Little Suns, or smaller chiefs of surrounding villages, assembled with the great warriors and whites accompanying the expedition at the tables forming the square. These Indians had knives formed from the wild cane of the country and hardened in the fire, which were used for carving their meats and other like purposes, one of these was placed in the hand of every white man. The Great Sun standing up, looked reverently upon the sun for a few moments. Then lifting his hands, placed them on the head of La Salle. This was imitated by the Little Suns placing their hands upon the heads of all the whites, and when the chief or Great Sun removed his hands, and said, "Eat," the Little Suns did likewise, and the feast commenced. These cane knives, however, were comparatively useless in the hands of the French, and laying them down, they took from the belts at their sides the large hunting-knives they carried. This movement was so simultaneous, that alarm was apparent in every Indian face and a movement was made by the Indians as if to leave the table; but they were soon reassured when they saw the use to which they were applied. They watched the ease with which these cut through the flesh and cleaved the smaller bones of their repast, and expressed their astonishment in asking where the canes grew from which they were made—indicating conclusively that they had never before seen a metallic knife, and probably never before had seen iron or steel. When the feast had concluded, La Salle was led to a lodge prepared for him, and all his party were shown to places prepared for them, to repose after the meal. Upon the males retiring, the women came forth cleanly clad and removed everything from the tables.

This was the first view the whites had of the Natchez women. When their work was completed, they commenced to chant a song in slow and measured tones; soon, however, it quickened into merry cadences and the young females commenced a wild, fantastic dance. The older sang on, keeping time by slapping their hands and a swinging movement of the head and body right and left. Apparently, at the termination of a stanza, they would stoop suddenly forward and slap the hands upon each thigh, uttering at the same moment a shrill cry, when the dancers would leap with astonishing agility high in the air and, alighting, stand perfectly still. This exhibition called the French from their repose, who seemed delighted, and very soon joined in the dance; mirth excited mirth, and in a little while the village was in a complete uproar. The young warriors, however, were seen to scowl whenever the French approached too nigh the women, and especially when they took their hands and turned them around. The French were not slow to perceive this, nor were they mistaken in the delight it afforded the girls. The timidity of the latter soon disappeared and each lass singled out a beau, and was quite familiar with him. The French remained for some days enjoying the hospitality of the Natchez, returning to their boats and to the opposite shore of the river at night for greater security.

Among the French there was one, a stalwart young fellow, who had made the conquest of a heart among the maidens, and was surprised late at night to find she had swum the Mississippi to place herself by his side at the camp-fire. She implored him to remain with the Natchez and become a Great Sun, that her family was one of great influence at the White Clay village of which she was the belle, and she would marry him. She was rich, and the favorite of the Little Sun of her town, who had given her great presents. But Crapaud was aware of the price of these gifts, and though he did not refuse, was not inclined to the union, or to remain with her people. He promised, however, to see her to-morrow, and told her if he could prevail on some of his companions to remain, he would; but insisted if they would not, she must consent to follow him and provide a girl for each of his companions, who would accompany them to their homes, which he made very lovely in his description. They were standing now on the bank of the river and day was approaching. She pointed to the planet just above the horizon, and then to the place in the heavens where it would be in an hour, and said she must then be in her lodge, and plunging into the river swam rapidly to the opposite shore. The next day was the one appointed for the departure of La Salle and party. True to her promise—the Natchez girl had found a maiden for each of the party, who was willing to abandon her people and go with the strangers on their perilous and unknown journey, and to be the wives of the pale-faces.

The French, with much ceremony, were dismissed by the Great Sun, and a strong escort of both sexes followed them to their boats. The ceremony of shaking hands was gone through with; all the men first, and then the women; the last, as previously arranged, were the girls who were to follow their sweethearts. At a signal each was grasped and hurried forward toward the boats. The alarm was given, and in a moment the bows of the warriors were strung, and they rushed yelling to the rescue; overpowered, the French released the women and springing into their boats were soon out of danger of the arrows which were sent in showers after them—nor did they escape unscathed. Several of the men were wounded, and some of them severely. When once away from the shore, the French seized their guns and fired a volley, but were prevented from further demonstrations by La Salle; not wishing to leave behind him an enemy, who might be troublesome to him on his return up the river.

This adventure was the only hostile one of the entire trip. This was provoked by the folly and crime of his men without the knowledge of La Salle. How true it is that man in every condition and of every race will fight for his woman as surely as the game cock for his hen! Long years after, and when the last Natchez had been gone from the land of his love many years, and when threatening war was disturbing the people of the colonies, there came here a band of men, as had come to this land of beauty and plenty, the oppressors of the Natchez, seeking to make a peaceful home upon these hills, where grew in luxuriant profusion the magnolia and great tulip-trees, and where the atmosphere was redolent with the perfume of the wild flowers which clothed and ornamented the trees and grounds so fruitful and rich with nature's gifts.

The country was claimed as part of West Florida and dominated by the Spanish Government. They were anxious to have the country populated, and donated certain quantities or tracts of land to any one who came to settle and remain in the country. These settlements at first were made on the bluffs projecting through the alluvial swamp to the river's brink, and at or near the mouths of the small streams debouching into the river from the eastern shore. The west bank was deemed uninhabitable in consequence of the spring floods sweeping over the alluvial formation, extending from forty to seventy miles west of the river; and there being no highlands or bluffs approaching the river from the west, below what is now known as Helena, in Arkansas, this vast territory was one interminable swamp, clothed with immense forest-trees, gigantic vines, and jungle-bushes. It was interspersed with lakes, and bayous as reservoirs and drains for the wonderful floods which annually visit this country. Around these were lands remarkable for their fertility—indeed, unsurpassed by any on the face of the earth; but worthless, however, for cultivation, as long as unprotected against these annual floods. The system of leveeing was too onerous and expensive to be undertaken by the people sparsedly populating the eastern bank throughout the hill-country. The levee system which had reclaimed so much of the low country in Louisiana, had not extended above Pointe Coupée, in 1826. Yet there were some settlements on several of the lakes above, especially on Lakes Concordia and St. Joseph.

The immense country in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi in possession of the Indians, interposed a barrier to emigration. To think of leaving home and friends to go away beyond these savages, seemed an undertaking too gigantic for any but men of desperate fortunes, or of the most indomitable energy.

Adventurers had wandered into the country and returned with terrible stories of the unhealthiness of the climate as well as the difficulties to be overcome in reaching it; thus deterring the emigrant who desired a new home. When General Jackson was elected to the Presidency a new policy was inaugurated. The Indians were removed beyond the Mississippi; the lands they had occupied were brought into market, and a flood of emigration poured into these new acquisitions. Cotton had suddenly grown into great demand. The increase of population, and the great cheapness of the, fabrics from cotton, had increased the demand. In Europe it had rapidly increased, and in truth all over the world. Emigration from Europe had set in to a heavy extent upon the United States, and the West was growing in population so rapidly as to create there a heavy demand for these fabrics. The world was at peace; commerce was unrestricted, and prosperity was everywhere. Europe had recovered from her long war, and the arts of peace had taken hold of every people, and were bearing their fruit. All the lands intermediate between the frontiers west of Georgia and Tennessee and those of the east of Mississippi and Louisiana were soon appropriated; and the more fertile lands of the two latter States were coming rapidly into request for the purpose of cotton cultivation.

The great flood of 1828 had swept over every cultivated field west of the Mississippi, and seemed to demonstrate the folly of ever attempting to reduce these lands to profitable cultivation. But with the increase of population came wealth and enterprise. The levees were continued up the river. A long period of comparatively low water encouraged settlements upon the alluvial bottoms. The levees were continued up the west bank, and in a few years the forests had melted away from the margin of the river. Large fields were in their stead, and were continually increasing in extent. Improvements of a superior character were commencing, and an occasional break in the levee, and partial inundation, did not deter, but rather stimulated the planters to increased exertion, to discipline and control the great floods poured down from the rain-sheds extending from the headwaters of the Ohio to those of the Mississippi, Missouri, Arkansas, and Red Rivers, embracing in extent an area greater than the continent of Europe. It really seemed an attempt to defy the decrees of fate. In 1828, the waters from Cairo to Baton Rouge, a distance of nine hundred miles, averaged fifty miles in width. For months the great river was covered with forests of timber, torn up with the roots by the flood, floating and tumbling wildly along the terrible torrent, making the navigation extremely dangerous for the few steamers then upon the river. How often have I heard old men, who were long resident in the country, when standing on the bluff at Natchez, viewing the extent of that memorable flood, say: "Every man who attempts to cultivate these bottom lands will be ruined. The river demands them as a reservoir for her surplus waters when in flood." But enterprise was undeterred; the levees went up and the settlements went on to increase; and when the spoiler came all the valley was dotted over with pretty villages and magnificent cotton plantations, containing and sustaining a prosperous, rich, intelligent, and happy population. They are swept away, and ruin reigns over this desolated land.

This was but the beginning of the subduing to man's will and cultivation this entire and unparalleled valley. What had been done demonstrated the possibility of redeeming every inch of the alluvial land along the entire valley to the production of the richest staples, with all the necessaries to man's support, comfort, and wealth. It is pleasing to contemplate this immense plain as one extended scene of cultivation—the beautiful lakes of every form, surrounded with palatial homes and fertile fields; lovely towns upon their borders, with the church-spires pointing to heaven, surrounded with shrubs and flowers of every variety and hue; streams meandering among the extended plantations; railroads intersecting it in every direction; and all this mighty field, a thousand miles long by fifty broad, teeming with production, and pouring into the lap of commerce a wealth absolutely incalculable. The work was begun and was rapidly progressing; but now, when and by whom will this great, glorious garden be made?

To do this was the black man's mission; but ere his work was done he was converted into a machine to undo all his work. Inconceivable calamity has followed, and to him is fixed a decade which will soon run to extinction.

CHAPTER XXI.

TWO STRANGE BEINGS.

Romance of Western Life—Met By Chance—Parting on the Levee—Meeting at the Sick-Bed—Convalescent—Love-Making—"Home, Sweet Home"— Theological Discussions—Uncle Tony—Wild, Yet Gentle—An Odd Family—The Adventurer Speculates.

It was in the spring of the year away back in time when there landed at the town of St. Francisville, or Bayou Sara, a small periagua, or canoe, containing two young men clad in skins, with a camp-kettle, guns, some curiously painted skins, Indian bows, quivers, and Indian curiosities. Their hair was long, their unshaven beards were full and flowing, and in all their appearance they were wild and savage. There were but few houses in the hamlet below the hill. Among these was one of more pretensions than the rest. It was a store, and the merchant was an Irishman. There was near it a neat family carriage. One of the young savages went into this store to find materials for writing to his home-friends, from whom he had been separated for many long months. He found in the store three ladies. Two were young, the other was an aged matron. They seemed not only surprised at the novel apparition before them, but alarmed. This surprise seemed to increase when they saw the young savage rapidly filling, upon the counter, a sheet of paper. They desisted from their shopping, and watched intently the wild savage. When his letter was completed, he politely desired the accommodating merchant to send it for him to the post-office. Then lifting his gray wolf-skin cap from his head, he bowed politely to the ladies and turned to leave the store and their presence. The salutation was gracefully acknowledged, and especially by the matron. Very soon they joined the curious crowd who were examining the contents of the canoe, now placed on the land to await the coming of a steamer that was freighting with cotton above. One of the young ladies seemed much interested and made many inquiries. A bow and quiver was given into her hand. The latter was fashioned from the skin of a Mexican tiger, and was filled with arrows. One of these was bloody, and its history was asked of the youth she had met in the store. It was the blood of a Pawnee chief who, by this arrow, had been slain in battle, and was the gift to the youth from the daughter of the fallen chief, together with the bow and quiver of the Indian who had slain her father, and who was in turn killed by a chief of her tribe.

How beautiful she was to this wanderer of the wilderness! Months upon months had passed away, and he had only looked upon the blank and unmeaning features of the desert savage woman. With these his heart had no sympathy. Like the panther of their plains they were swift of foot, symmetrical in form, wild, untamed and untamable, fierce and unfeeling; and were not formed by nature for sympathy or social union with the higher organizations of civilized man. His dream of romance was being realized. The vacuum in his heart was filling. How in contrast were his feelings and appearance! Clad as a savage, his skin was covered with the fabric of an Indian woman, closely fitting, with moccasins on his feet, and a gray wolf-skin cap upon his head—his long, black hair with the luxuriant growth of two years curling over his shoulders, and his beard, like the wing of night fluttering in the breeze, waving down from his chin to his breast in ringlets, glossy and beautiful. He was lithe as a savage, and seemed to be one. In his heart were kindling soft emotions, and memories of maidens he had known—now far, far away—came crowding upon that heart. Before him stood the embodiment of beauty and grace, attired with costly and beautiful fabrics which flowed about her person like the white vapor upon the breezes of spring. Elegance was in her every attitude, and grace in every movement. Her features and her eyes beamed with a curious wish to learn the story of the strange wild being before her. Their two hearts were in sympathy; but to each other it was a secret. How strangely they had met! How strangely they were feeling! How soon they were to part! "Where is he from? Where is he going?" asked her eyes; and he looked: "Who are you; and where is your home, beautiful being, so strangely and so unexpectedly met?"

An arrow was shot from the bow to gratify a request. She followed the quivering thing with her eye, as it sped like a shaft of light to its destined mark. To retrieve it she walked with the youth to where, fixed in a bale of cotton, it trembled, some hundred yards away. Slowly she returned by the youth's side, and drooped her head, listening to the wild mountain adventures he was telling—the chase of the elk, the antelope, and the wild buffalo; the hazardous ride through the wild prairies, expanding away in the distance to kiss the horizon; the stealthy wiles of the revengeful savage; the fierce fight of savage men; the race for very life, when the foe followed; and the bivouac upon the prairie's breast, with the weary horse sleeping and resting by his side. Will he ever forget the speaking of the beaming features of that beautiful creature, when she lifted her head and looked into his face? A frown darkened the matron's features as her élève returned to the curious group which was listening to the narrative of the older of the two strangers. It said: "What did you leave me for? Why this indiscretion?" Ah! how often old women forget they were once young!

The steamer is coming. She is here; and the trappings of the wanderers are on board. The young wild man stands alone upon the upper deck. His eyes pierce to where stands the sylph he leaves with reluctance. She is looking at him. He lifts his cap and bows farewell. She waves her kerchief in return. The steamer speeds away. They are parted. Has that brief interview left an impression upon those two young hearts to endure beyond a day? Will she dream of the dark beard, curled and flowing—of the darker eye which looked and spoke? and will the wild story of the western wilderness come in the silent darkness of her chamber, and make her nestle closer to her pillow? Will her heart ask: "Shall I ever meet him again?"

He has gone away; a waif about the land—a feather on the world, driven about, as destiny impels, without fixed intentions; yet buoyant with the ardor of youth, and happy in the excess of youthful hopes, dreamy and wild adventures. He has tasted the savage love of woods and wilds, and the nature—which was born thousands of years ere the teachings of civilization had tamed the wild man into an educated, home-loving being—revives, and the two struggle for mastery in his heart. The bleak mountain-peaks, the wide-extended plain and its wild denizens, and the excitement these give, stirs his bosom, and the wish struggles up to return to them. But the gentler chords of his heart are in tune. The once-loved home, and she, the once-loved and yet-remembered maiden, is there, and it may be she pines for his return. He gazed on the beautiful apparition but a moment gone, and thought of another; and thought begat thought until the loved one he had left rose up to memory's call. He was alone, looking upon the great river through whose turbid waters he was borne away, and he felt he was lengthening a chain linked to his heart which pulled him back—to what, and to whom? It was a vision—a dream with his eyes open: indistinct, unembodied, a very shadow; still it floated about in his imagination, and he was sad. He was in the city—the great Sodom of the West. He was an object of wonder to every curious eye. His wild appearance and gentle manner comported illy, and the thoughtless crowd followed him. Attired now as a civilized being, and feeling that the vagrant life of a savage must lead to grief, he called to mind the tear which stole from the rheumy eyes of the old trapper as he narrated his adventures in the wilderness, and cursed the hour he ever wandered from his home. His life had been a continual danger, his hope had been always to return to his early attachments; but the chain of habit fettered him, and he had learned to love the wild, solitary life, because of its excitements and its dangers. Should he, like this man, come to love the solitude and silence of the wilderness, and find companionship only with his traps and guns?

His resolution was taken, he would renew the strife with the world and go back to busy life. His companion of many dangers and long marches was going to Mexico in search of new adventures. They are alone upon the broad levee—busy men are hurrying to and fro, little heeding the two—a small schooner is dropping and sheeting home her sails; she is up for Tampico, and Gilmanot goes in her; she is throwing off her fastenings. "All aboard," cries the swarthy, whiskered captain—a grasp of the hand—no word was spoken—it was warm and sincere, there was no need of words—each understood that last warm farewell pressure. She is sweeping around Slaughter-house Point—only the topmasts are visible now—and now she is gone. The young adventurer stands alone and the crowd goes hurrying on. How many in desolation of heart have stood alone and unheeded by the busy, passing multitude upon that broad levee! How many tears of misery have moistened its shell-covered summit, when thinking of friends far, far away they should never see again, and when hope had been rooted from the heart!

He wandered to the great square, now so beautifully ornamented with shrubs and flowers which love the sun and the South's fat soil, growing and blooming about the bronze representation of the loved hero who had been her shield and savior in the hour of her peril, Andrew Jackson. Then there were a few trees only, and beneath these, here and there, a rude rural seat or bench. The old, gray cathedral was frowning on the world's sins, so rife around her; and the great, naked square and the mighty muddy river which was hurrying away to the sea. To the most thoughtless will come reflection, and the sweetest face is mellowed by sorrow. Here under these trees, in the midst of a great city, came to the young adventurer reflection and sighing sorrow. His mother and father came up in memory; the home of childhood, his brother, his sister, his friends, all were remembered; his heart flooded over and he wept like a little child. Blessed are they who can cry. It is nature's outlet for grief, and the heart would break if we could not cry. The heart is not desolate when alone in the forest or the boundless grass-clothed plains of the West. Nature is all around you, and her smile is beneficent. There is companionship in the breeze, in the waving grass, the rustling leaves, and the meanings of the wind-swayed limbs of the yielding forest. In the city's multitude to move, and be unknown of all; to hear no recognized voice; to meet no sympathizing smile or eye; to be silent when all are speaking, and to know that not one of all these multitudes share a thought or wish with you—this is desolation, the bitterness of solitude.

A year has gone by, and the youth has found a new home and has made new friends. He is one of the busy world and struggling with it. He is in commerce's mart and is one of the multitude who come and congregate there for gain; in the hall of Justice, where litigants court the smiles and favors of the blind goddess, where right contends against wrong, and is as often trampled as triumphant; and where wisdom lends herself for hire, and bad men rarely meet their dues.

Pestilence had come, and the frightened multitude were fleeing from the scourge. There was one who came and proffered the hospitality of his home—where Hygeia smiled and fever never came. Thither he went, but the poison was in his blood, and as he slept it seized upon his vitals. His suffering was terrible, and for days life's uncertain tenure seemed ready to release her hold on time. In his fever-dream there was flitting about him a fairy form; it would come and go, as the moonlight on the restless wave—a moment seen and in a moment gone. He saw and knew nothing for many days distinctly; he would call for his mother and weep, when only winds would answer. Delirium was in his brain, and wild fancies chased each other; he heard the crowing of cocks and saw his sister; his father would come to him, and he would stretch out his hand and grasp the shadowy nothing. There was a halo of beauty all about him; prismatic hues trembled in the light, and the tones of sweet music floated upon the breeze. He saw angels swimming in the golden light; the blue ether opened, and they came through to greet him and to welcome him to heaven. Then all was darkness, the crisis had come. He slept in oblivious ease—it was long; and awaking, the fever was gone. There was a gentle, sweet, sorrowful face before him—their eyes met; for a moment only he looked—it was she whom he had met and parted from without a hope of ever meeting again when robed as the Indian he stood upon the steamer's deck and waved farewell forever. He reached forth his hand. She took it and approached, saying, "You are better, and will soon be well." He could only press her hand as the tears flooded over his eyes. With a kerchief white as innocence it was wiped away and the hand that held it laid gently on his brow—that touch thrilled his every nerve.