two Sachems, the pilot and the steersman;-as one might say, the gods of the lakes. The rivers of Canada are without annals in the Old World. How different is the fate of the Ganges, the Euphrates, the Nile, the Danube, and the Rhine! How much sweat and blood have conquerors poured forth in order to cross in their course those waters which a goatherd can step across at their source.

London, from April till Sept., 1822.

THE COURSE OF THE OHIO.

LEAVING the lakes of Canada we came to Port William, at the confluence of the rivers Ohio and Kentucky. There the landscape displays a most extraordinary magnificence. This splendid country is, however, called Kentucky--from the name of the river which flows through it, and which signifies the "River of Blood."

It owes this name to its beauty. During the space of two centuries the tribes in alliance with the Cherokees disputed its occupation with those of the Iroquois. Will the European races which now people the banks prove more virtuous and free than the exterminated savages? Is there not slave-labour in this country of man's primitive independence, under the lash of their masters? Do no prisons and gibbets replace the open hut and the tall tulip-tree in which the birds built their nests? Will the riches of nature give rise to no new wars? Will Kentucky cease to be the "land of blood," and will the monuments of art prove a greater ornament to the banks of the Ohio than the monuments of nature?

After passing the Wabach, the great Cypress, the Cumberland River, the Cherokee or Tenessee, and the Yellow Banks, we arrive at a strip of land often flooded when the waters are high. Here the confluence of the Mississippi and the Ohio takes place, in latitude 36 deg. 54 min. north. The two rivers, offering equal resistance, slacken their speed. They run alongside of each other in the same channel without mingling, for some miles :-as two great races, originally separate, but subsequently amalgamated, form only one nation; as two illustrious rivals share the same couch after the battle as man and wife, descended from hostile races,

who had at first little inclination towards one another, subsequently join their destinies in marriage.

For myself, like the powerful sources of rivers, I have spread out the little course of my life; at one time on one side of a mountain, and then again on the other-wilful in my mistakes, yet never intentionally doing wrong; preferring poor valleys to rich plains -resting on flowers rather than in a palace. As for the rest, I was so much pleased with my travels that I thought little about the Pole a company of traders about to start for the country of the Creeks, in the Floridas, permitted me to join them.

We set forward towards the country then known under the general name of the Floridas, but now divided into the states of Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and Tenessee. We followed pretty nearly the foot-path which now connects the great road from Natchez to Nashville with Jackson and Florence, and which enters Virginia by Knoxville and Salem-a country at this time very little frequented, but the lakes and best portions of which Bertram had nevertheless explored. The planters of Georgia and the coasts of the Floridas came to the residences of the different tribes of Creeks to buy horses and half-wild beasts, which multiplied amazingly on the savannahs that surrounded the springs on the banks of which I have represented Atala and Chactas as reposing. They even extended their journeys as far as the Ohio.

We were urged on in our course by a fresh wind. The Ohio, swelled by the tribute of a hundred rivers, was at one time lost in the lakes which opened before us, and at another in the forests. Islands arose in the middle of the lakes: we made sail towards one of the largest, and landed at eight o'clock in the morning.

I crossed a prairie strewn over with the yellow-flowered ragwort, the variegated mallow, roses, and the purple-tufted obelaria.

An Indian river attracted my attention. The contrast between this ruin and the apparent newness of nature, this monument of mankind in a desert, made a great impression upon me. What race dwelt on this island? what was their name? what their origin? and what the period of their extinction? Did they live while the world, in whose bosom they were hidden, continued unknown to the other three parts of the globe? Their silence was possibly cotemporary with the fame of other great nations which have since in their turn passed away

into oblivion.*

*The ruins of Milla and Palenque, in Mexico, afford sufficient proofs in the present day that the relative antiquity of the New and Old Worlds is still doubtful.-(Paris, note in 1834.)

On the sandy nooks, among the ruins of the tumuli, there grows a species of poppy with red flowers hanging at the end of small foot-stalks from a green stem. The stalk and the flower have a smell which is communicated to the fingers on touching the plant. This smell, which survives the flower, is but an emblem of the memory of a life spent in solitude. I watched the waterlilies as they began to hide their white flowers under the waves towards the close of day, and the Pariatica, which only uncloses its flowers at night. The pyramidal Enothera, with oblong denticulated leaves of a dark green colour, has other habits, and another destiny.

Its yellow flower begins gradually to expand in the evening, when Venus is sinking below the horizon. It continues to open to the rays of the stars; the dawn finds it in all its beauty; during the forenoon it fades, and at mid-day falls off. It only lives a few hours, but it spends these hours under a serene sky, fanned by the breath of Venus and Aurora. What matters, then, the shortness of its life? Garlands of Dionea hang over the streams, and insects hum around. There are also humming-birds and butterflies, whose brilliant colours vie in splendour with the variegated tints of the flowers- During these excursions,

and in the midst of such studies, I was often struck with their vanity. What! could not the Revolution, which had driven me into the woods, and still hung over me, inspire me with some more serious thoughts? Was it during the period of the distractions of my country that I should be engaged in describing plants, butterflies, and flowers?

The selfishness of mankind affords a standard for estimating the slight importance of the most astonishing events. How many men are totally indifferent to all such occurrences! How many more entirely ignorant of them! The total population of the globe is estimated at from 1,100,000,000 to 1,200,000,000: one individual dies every second; and thus during every minute we pass, in grief or joy, sixty human beings expire, and sixty families are plunged into mourning and sorrow.

Life is but one continued torment. The chain of mourning and funerals by which we are encircled never breaks, but constantly enlarges its circuit: we ourselves form a link in the chain. Let us still, however, exalt and magnify the importance of those catastrophes of which seven-eighths of the world never hear! Still let us pant after a renown which will never extend a few leagues from our tombstones! Let us plunge into the ocean

of bliss, of which each instant glides away among sixty coffins constantly renewed!

Nam nox nullà diem, neque noctem aurore sequuta est,
Quæ non audierit mixtos vagitibus ægris

Ploratus, mortis comitis et funeris atri.

"No day has passed, nor night succeeded morn,
But still the sounds of mourning and of grief
Have sounded loud-attendants upon death."

London, from April till September, 1822.

FOUNTAIN OF JOUVENCE-MUSKOGEES AND SEMINOLES-OUR CAMP.

THE natives of Florida have a legend, that in the middle of one of their lakes lies an island inhabited solely by beautiful women; the Muskogees, they say, have often attempted its conquest; but this Eden vanishes before their canoes-an image of the chimeras which flee before the grasp of our desires.

This island also contained a fountain of Jouvence; who desires to renew his life by a draught?

These fables were very near assuming a kind of reality in my eyes. At a moment when we least expected it, we saw a flotilla of canoes leave a bay, some rowed, others with sails, and make for our island, which they soon reached. The canoes contained two families of Creek Indians, the one Seminoles, the other Muskogees; among the latter were a number of Cherokees and Bois- Brûlés. I was struck with the elegance of these savages, who bore no resemblance to those of Canada.

The Seminoles and Muskogees are rather large, fine-looking men, but, by an extraordinary contrast, their mothers, wives, and daughters, are the smallest race of women known in America.

The Indian women who landed on our island belonged to a race of mingled Cherokee and Spanish blood, and were tall. Two of them resembled the Creoles of St. Domingo and the Isle of France, but had the delicate olive complexion of the women of the Ganges. These two Floridans, cousins on the father's side, served as my models, the one of Atala, the other of Celuta; but they excelled the sketches I have made of them, in that variable and fugitive truth of nature, those characteristics of race and

climate, which I have been unable thoroughly to depict. There was an indescribable charm in the oval countenance, the complexion over which a shade, as of a light orange-coloured mist, seemed cast, the black soft hair, the long eyes, half-concealed beneath their satin lids, languidly lifted to allow a glimpse of them; in short, in the united seductions of the Indian and the Spaniard.

This meeting with our hosts caused some little change in our plans; our trading agents began to inquire about horses; and it was decided that we should go and encamp near the place where the horses were kept.

The plain on which our camp was established was covered with cattle, horses, bisons, buffaloes, cranes, turkeys, and pelicans; these birds variegated the green pasture-land with their white, black, and rose-coloured plumage.

The love affairs of the Spaniards and the Creek women formed the ground-work of many adventures; and in these romances the Bois-Brûlés played a principal part. One story, put into Seminole verse under the name of " Tabamica," was chaunted in crossing the woods.* Carried off in their turn by the colonists, the Indian women soon died neglected at Pensacola; and the tale of their misfortunes went to enlarge the romanceros, and to be placed beside the lamentations of Ximena.

THE TWO FLORIDANS-RUINS ON THE OHIO.

THE earth is a charming mother; we owe existence to her; in infancy, she feeds us with milk and honey; in youth and maturity, she lavishes her cooling springs, her harvests, and fruits on us; she offers us everywhere shade, bath, table, and bed; and when we die, she receives us again to her bosom, and clothes our remains in grass and flowers, while she secretly transforms us into her own substance, to reproduce us in some graceful form. Such were my thoughts when my opening eyes rested on the blue heaven, the canopy of my couch.

The hunters were gone on their daily occupation, and I remained alone with the women and the children; I left not the side of my two sylvan goddesses; the one was haughty, the

* I have given it in my travels.—(Note at Geneva, 1832.)