as they waxed older and stronger. His prayer was heard. There was a dark commotion in the turbid blue sky, as of a host hurrying away, appeased and conciliated, by some tremendous rite.

In one word, Logan abandoned his dominion, that his dominion might not abandon him. He left it-terrible as the sway of an evil spirit, that his son might be made to tread in his footsteps, while the fire of his heart was newly kindled; while the blood of his being was in its fiercest agitation; while his youthful ears were yet ringing with the curses of his father upon the encroaching white settler; and while his young spirit stood shivering, and appalled, at the mysterious disappearance of that fierce and implacable father.

Thus much for two generations of Logan. The blood of this race was afterwards mingled with that of their white neighbours, and produced, in their remote descendants, a family neither Indian nor white; neither savage nor civilized. I knew them. The last time that I was in my country, I paid them a visit, and they all assembled to meet me-for--and why should I conceal it? I, myself, am of the same blood. There was in the males, the erect port, the lofty, reserved carriage, and the sullen, glistening, snaky black eye of the Indian; but the swarthy and deep, in tinctured hue of the native American had yielded to the hearty brown. of the sturdy white settler; the strong and adventurous woodman. And in the females, there was little to betray their high origin, except their jetty black hair, and their exceedingly straight limbs, for their complexion was the warm, bright, voluptuous olive, of the young Spanish girl. In both, however, I have seen the blood reddening in the forehead; and the underlip quivering with emotion, in a manner that was never seen, never! in the unadulterated, undegenerate Indian. His face is bronze; his feelings, and the fountain thereof, undiscoverable; his nature inaccessible-its surface like that of frozen waters, unshaken alike by the tempestuous visitation of outward things; and revealing nought of the inward and perpetual agitation of their secret, and mysterious depths--forever placid--forever motionless!

man,

Passion only can move the Indian--and his motion then, is that of Death, which he breathes upon the heart of and it dissolves in silence. But then, then, wo to every living creature that crosses his path. His muscles are cracking with tension; a preternatural strength rushes from his heart, through all his struggling extremities; and he becomes, while, in appearance, as immoveable as the dark sculptured marble before you, literally and truly, a Devil!

This family, the mother of which was the nearest blood descendant of the great Logan; and her supremacy was acknowledged with the deepest veneration, by all the neighbouring tribes, lived at this time in a little cabin, close by a clear and beautiful stream, a branch of the Shannandoah, which many years before had been turned out of its natural course, and dammed up by the beavers, so as almost to enclose the few acres of bright tufted green earth, on the very margin of which, the little Indian habitation nestled and cowered. It was not the English cottage, overrun with shining honeysuckle and vivid foliage; nor the Irish cabin, with bare walls, and floor of trodden earth; and still less was it the fantastic thatch-covered dwelling of the novelist, where brown bread and milk, cleanly scoured tables, and coarse napkins, and sheets 'white as the driven snow,' are forever set out to the imagination. No! but it was far more picturesque than either. It was humble, and at a distance might have been taken for a green hillock, overrun with wild, flowering luxuriance, and shadowed, and fanned like a fountain, by the glittering birch and the waving branches of many a young tree that leant over it: on its walls of broken rock, through every crevice and cranny of which, bright transparent flowers, and tendrils, and vines were creeping, you would discover the implements of war--the tomahawk, the rifle, the bow and arrow--the fishing tackle, net and white bone hooks, game drying in the sun, the antlers of many a slain deer, the bear and panther skins, and the light airy canoe, all leaning, or lying about, or swinging in the wind, without order or design. In one word it was an Indian cottage; and looked like the

natural growth of the wilderness, or the hermitage of some half spiritual creature, loving quiet and idleness, and shunning all the bustle and activity of the world. It was a green solitude, populous with life and beauty, only at the heart:-unapproachable to every evil thing, like some enchanted spot, surrounded by running water. *

The mother of this family-how shall I describe her? She was an Indian queen, so stately, so natural, so magnificent! Clad in her flowing panther skin, with her quiver ringing at her shoulder; her feet sandalled; and resting upon her tall bow, she stood the express image of wild sovereignty, very beautiful, and full of power and grace. Her countenance was melancholy and serious; there was even something tender and touching in it, at times, as she turned her fine eyes towards her naked children, that lay basking about in the sunshine, and feathering their arrows, or sharpening their fish bones, and flints. The traces of high thought were visible upon her lofty forehead, and an occasional shadow passing over it, attended with a slight trembling, or a convulsive pressure of the lip, showed that her heart was labouring with deep emotion, at times. It was true-the spirit of the majestic woman was in perpetual travail for her people.

The father-I feel my heart growing warm again, as I recall the dear, dear spot to my remembrance, and if I do not soon take my eyes from the picture that is, at this instant, assembling itself before me, limb by limb, and feature by feature, I shall grow sick at heart, weary of my appointed trial, and throw aside my pen forever, fainting in very wretchedness of spirit. But there is a cure for this-the father!--at his name I revive; my faculties arouse themselves. Let us talk of ▾ the father then; of him that never forgot nor forgave. What a sublime constancy! I will imitate him--I!--well then 'the father.' He was a savage and untractable

*It is singular that the North American Indian, the Highlander, and the Irish peasant, unite in the same notion, that evil spirits cannot cross running water.

man, related, I remember to have heard in my youth, to a noble family in his native land; one, who, having run and rioted through every excess of indulgence, had, at last, turned his back forever upon the old world, and embarked for America-How did he this? With what spirit? Not, I am sure, with that of the young adven turer, braving death and terror in their very hiding places, the chambers of the ocean-Seeing cities under the wave, and diamonds studding the brown cliffs that he is approaching-no, oh no!-nothing of this: but with the cold, deadly, unforgiving misanthrophy of one, who, leaving all on earth that should bind him to it, turns in mockery of them that weep and shiver, as their heartstrings are tugged at, and shakes off the dust from his feet in scornful testimony against them,-snapping asunder every tie of sympathy and affection-every filament of brotherhood or love-every chord of judgment, habit or feeling-bruising with an iron hand, and breaking, as in derision, with profaning levity, the youngest and greenest tendrils of the heart, alike with the sinuous and gnarled roots of our toughest and most protracted habitudes-trampling on them all!-scorning them all!-scattering them all, without shame, or remorse, yea, without emotion!

Such was the father; a savage before he left the palaces of white men. But he was a great savage. He had a desperate but sublime ambition. He was full of the fiery element, that rises in the arteries like mercury in a thermometer, at the approach of greatness. His whole nature was heroick-but it was the nature of him who thundered against the battlements of heaven. He came to the colonies in company with white men, solely because he could not man and navigate a ship over the broad Atlantic, with his own individual and solitary spirit. But the first moment he landed, the first moment that he touched the shores of the Western world, he abjured them all; he turned upon them, convulsively, and cursed them all in the bitterness of his heart-his name, and family, and kindred and country, nay, his very religion did he curse, for that he cried, even that was a religion of blood. He disappeared. For years it

was thought that he had perished, and he was almost forgotten; yet men would start at the mention of his name, and look hastily about them, before they ventured to repeat any of the innumerable and terrifick stories that were told of him.

I heard them once-from savages-I was a boy then -but I never shall forget my awful admiration of the father, or the silent yearning of my heart towards the mother of this family. We were related-distantly, it is true, but so related, that our proximity could be seen in our very tread, and heard in our lowest whisper. Yes! there was never a descendant of Logan, no matter how his frame was distorted, his disposition perverted, or his blood diluted by relationship to the whites, that would not have been recognized and hailed as of that family, by the least sagacious of the tribe, even after many generations.

But what became of this family? What! they were slaughtered-butchered, and profaned. Their end was mysterious. At midnight a traveller had reposed with them, eaten of their bread, and drunk of their cup-and his comrades, who followed upon his track before the next sun had risen, found the Indian cottage blazing and crackling-the walls demolished-the trees falling to ashes-and the skeletons of many hewed and bound and broken human creatures-some very little-and yet retaining the expression of agony, in their locked and rivetted limbs, slowly consuming in the fervent heat. Who were the murderers? It was never known-no mortal lip hath ever named them-but there was one, one even on this earth, whom they were never to escape; one who pursued them, sleeping and waking, by night and by day, with fire and sword, till his preternatural sagacity and wrath, were satisfied. And then -what became of him? He. went mad-mad! and roamed for whole years through the impenetrable solitude, in quest of his beloved and her little ones.

But let us leave this picture. My heart fails me; I cannot go on. Let me recur awhile to a manuscript of my own, and content myself with copying the incidents that are there related, with some of the reflections that