the way, is their usual mode; but on this occasion there was more than ordinary interest and energy displayed; and there soon appeared good reason for it. There was a tall, athletic Indian in pursuit, with eyes flashing fire, and dealing out strokes as if he had the good will to drive the river back to its source. It was a royal race, and no Isham about it. A jealous lover was in the last canoe, and he had the consent of all friends, save the two who were foremost in the race. They might have come fifty or sixty miles, for aught any one could tell, and it was impossible to say how far they ran. The flitting past was all I heard of; and imagination can only picture one of the most fearful struggles that ever took place between two mortal men. Doubtless one or the other fell, and became food for alligators and buzzards.

- struck a

The punishment for murder is death, invariably, even when it is accidental. They make no exception to the law, that 'whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.' Anciently, they made the culprit stoop on his knees, and then with one foot on his back, the execu tioner who must be the nearest relative of the deceased tremendous blow with a sharp-edged war-club on the head, so as to cleave it almost through. At present, a rifle is placed in the hands of the nearest relation, and thus the work is despatched. I knew of an instance wherein a boy, only about eleven years of age, was the executioner. The culprit had killed his father, by a sudden blow; and as if he knew his fate sealed, and all attempts at escape must be either fatal or unworthy of him, he sat down quietly upon the ground, and the boy advanced with his father's rifle, and shot him, by applying the muzzle of the piece to his side. The ball passed first through his arm, and then down diagonally, and out at his hip: they buried the murderer and his victim in the same grave. Sometimes they thrust their dead up hollow trees, and at others, build a sort of small log-hut over them, so that wild beasts may not devour them.

For less heinous crimes than murder, they mutilate the ears, noses, and lips of culprits, and sometimes, by banishing themselves, and remaining away until the corn dances take place, they are forgiven at that jubilee.

I was acquainted with one tall, finely-modelled Indian, whose ears had been cut off for some peccadillo, and who felt the disgrace in his inmost soul. He was a dangerous man, but I did not heed him, particularly, until one day, wishing to try his strength against my own, I proposed to wrestle with him. Being very little, if any, over the middle size myself, and not particularly muscular in appearance, he seemed to anticipate an easy victory; but I doubted it, and at it we went in good earnest. Their mode of wrestling is, to rest their chin upon the shoulder of their opponent, and clasp the hands over the small of the back, and then press on the arch which the antagonist makes of his back to bend it in, and throw him thus, or, by a sudden wrench, dash him down upon the ground. In this manner we made many tracks in the sand, but neither could conquer; and so, by mutual consent, we gave it up; but on his turning to leave the ground, I thrust my fingers in his flank, under his short ribs, to tickle him, in mere sport, when, as if he had been converted to a fury, he turned, and with his war-knife projecting from the lower part of his clenched hand, his eyes glittering beyond any thing I ever saw in a rattle

snake's head, he brandished it with rigid muscle, and was in the very act to plunge it down into my heart, when he caught my eye laughing, and nothing but sport in it, and he merely shook his head, and put it up. I never would wrestle with such a hot-head again. He would not have been so furious, had there not been a deep feeling of revenge against the author of his disgrace; and I might have known he was a dangerous chap, had I noticed him more particularly before. He had all the marks of a furious character - not the least of which was the voice of a boy of seven years of age- for in these men, extremes

meet.

Never but once or twice, beside this time, did I come near being attacked by any of the red race, that I know of, and then it was in consequence of not properly regarding their dignity, which is a mortal offence. They did not like to hear me imitate their singing, but always said I had taken whiskey too much,' although I abominated the stuff, and they knew it but I loved to teaze them, and my danger was, in carrying it too far. On one occasion, one came at me, with a bad intent, for laughing at him for being caught out of his district, and taken prisoner by his chief, at the command of the United States' agent; and I certainly should have been obliged to stand in self-defence, knife to knife, had not a chief stepped in between us at the instant, and pronounced me, Heint le ma escha!' - that is, very good indeed,' or in Seminole English, 'good too much.'

The character last referred to had been many miles with me through the country, up the creeks or branches, to look for a mill site, and we had slept on the ground together, far from any white man's habitation. It was only a sudden passion he was in, and it must be confessed I was in the wrong myself in not looking into the depths of his mind, and in not being careful to avoid hurting his feelings, which I did thoughtlessly. Both of the above-mentioned Indians were high-minded, chivalrous fellows, and I have always thought the more of one of them for his spirit, although it came near costing me my life. Not giving sufficient credit to the Indian character, is the greatest cause of trouble with them and this is a good moral for a conclusion.

A NIGHT IN JUNE.

WRITTEN ON THE HEIGHTS OF THE HUDSON, NEAR ROCKLAND LAKE.

How peaceful is the night! - one large pale cloud

Is sailing slowly o'er the starry blue,

While, like a virgin in her snowy shroud,

Seems the young moon so wanly gleaming through;
The waters are at rest and not a swell

Uplifts the anchored lily's folded bell.

There's scarce a breath the spangled leaves to shake,
Yet fresh and cool comes up the dewy air;

The silver stars sleep in the silent lake,

As if another Heaven indeed were there.

Thus, while rich perfume all the scene embalms,
Night lies asleep, with Nature in her arms.

J. B.

THE SKY: (AN EXTRACT.)

BY J. G. PERCIVAL.

No wonder nations worshipped here, and bowed
Their forehead in the dust before the fires
That watch o'er earth, and seem to speak aloud
The deeds of unborn ages; man aspires
To the high seat of gods, and never tires
To read the infinite, the past, and throw
Looks full of hope before him; so those fires
Which are so high, and look so far, must know
All that is big with fate, and will have birth below.

Faith centres in the sky; 't is there we turn,
When earth is only darkness - there we send
Our vows to those we fear, and there we burn,
When the last pulse beats low, to find the end
Of all we hate, and thus in hope we tend
To the high dwelling of the stars-bright souls
Love with the purer elements to blend;

And so, when the deep knell its parting tolls,
They gaze on the pure light that ever round us rolls.

So those, who have been gifted with the flame
Of an ascending intellect, whose light

Kindled as death drew near, and seemed the same,
Or fairer on the verge of being's night

So they have fixed their last look on the bright,
Clear sky, as if awhile insphered and bound
In a full sense of glory their delight

Was too intensely keen to have a sound

It spake in the long smile they cast so calmly round.

BY THE AUTHOR OF

SALT WATER SKETCHES.

ROUGE ET NOIR,' 'THE INUNDATION OF SAINT PETERSBURgh,' etc.

THE PASSAGE HOME.

READER, has it ever been thy misfortune to encounter a London November fog? If not, thou canst form no adequate idea of its exquisite discomfort. Let me depict it to the eye of thy imagination. An unwholesome, sulphurous vapor, about the same color and almost as palpable as pea-soup, is above and around you, forming a most delectable horizon to your field of vision, a semi-opaque circle, six feet in diameter. The trottoir is smeared with a greasy, tenacious mud, and so slippery that the foot glides six inches backward from the spot whereon you plant it, at each advancing step, with the same pleasing facility as if you were perambulating a pavement of eels. Your ears are saluted with every imaginable variety of discordant sounds, the occasions of which probably all trifling-you magnify into something horrible, merely from inability to investigate them; and when at length, led by instinct more than any other guide, you reach the door of your hotel, felicitating yourself on the prospective creature-comforts of a good dinner and a bottle of Madeira, it is an even chance that some dexterous pickpocket has boarded you in the smoke,' and appropriated all your available resources.

I write advisedly, having experienced all these inconveniences, yea even to the last and most excruciating one, while enveloped in the mephitic nuisance I have endeavored to describe.

The November of 18- was remarkable for the opacity and continuity of these gentle exhalations a fact I have sufficient reason to remember, from the circumstance of the vessel in which I had engaged my passage to New-York, being, with some five hundred others, literally fog-bound for upward of a fortnight.

-

It was on the fifth of the month (the date was indelibly fixed in my memory by the united exertions of half a dozen ragged urchins beneath my window, yelling at the utmost stretch of their voices,

'Remember, remember the fifth of November,
When gunpowder, treason, and plot,' etc.,)

that I was disconsolately dallying with my breakfast in the commercial room at Hatchett's, Piccadilly, and inwardly petitioning Providence to clarify the atmosphere, when methought gleams of something like daylight began to steal through the misty window panes. Having wiped one of them with my handkerchief, I was delighted to find the opposite buildings visible, and to distinguish the shadowy outline of cabs, coaches and omnibuses, looming vast in the 'dim delirious air,' for some distance before they reached the corner of St. James-street. Anon, the circumjacent gloom began to imbibe a bilious tinge of sickly yellow, which gradually deepened as in the different stages of jaundice, until it assumed the color of a Seville orange. These were certain indications that Phœbus was about to get rid of the vapors,' and extinguish the torch and gas-light substitutes which had so long miserably counterfeited his bright and joyous smile.

As Captain Gilead had expressed his intention to sail as soon as the dissipation of the fog rendered the river navigation practicable, I determined to proceed on board forthwith. All my baggage, except a dressing-case and carpet-bag, had been shipped some days before, so that I had only to pay my bill, charter a conveyance to St. Katherine's dock, and depart.

Cab at the door for gent'man in No. 17: your bag and case is in, Sir.'

'Very well, James;' and I proceeded through the hall to the vehicle, bowed out by half a dozen domestics, whose obeisances I had just purchased at an average of two shillings and sixpence sterling per head. The particulars of the transit from Hatchett's to the dock how we encountered scores of grim effigies of that ungodly incendiary, Guy Fawkes, borne on the shoulders of dirty eleemosynary juveniles, whose custom-chartered appeals for alms were frequent, urgent, and apparently profitable how we met the Lord Mayor's ginger-bread carriage in Fleet-street- how we were blocked up by half a mile of wheels in Cheapside, where I saw several individuals in the tumult mistaking the pockets of their neighbors for their own - how the draymen swore, the omnibus cads fought, the women screamed, and the policemen swaggered together with the untutored eloquence with which Jehu expatiated upon the merits of his spavined anatomy of a steed, as he held him up with one hand, and belabored him with the other are matters unnecessary here to be dilated on, Suffice it to say, that I reached my

destination in time to jump on board the good ship Margaret, as she was moving through the dock-gates into the river, where the steam tug, which was to tow us to sea, awaited her. The voyage down the Thames is sufficiently dull; its muddy waters are freighted with the rich outpourings of every quarter of the globe; its shores thronged with dépôts capable of containing the mighty influx: but the eye becomes tired of resting upon this vast commercial monotony, where sordid Art has crowded Nature out of the scene; and though the chaste and classic architecture of Greenwich College, the Arsenal at Woolwich, and the noble ships of war at Deptford, and other naval stations, attracted my admiration, as we passed them, I felt relieved when, some time after passing Gravesend, we descried the beautiful little island of Sheppey in the distance, and exchanged the discolored waves and muddy banks of the river for the translucent green of the German Ocean. The steamer left us off Margate, and late on the evening of the seventh we dropped anchor at Spithead, to receive a channel pilot and the remainder of our passengers, I being the only one, with the exception of those forward, who had embarked at the metropolis.

After a detention of a few hours, we werghed anchor, and again set sail, with a fair wind. When I joined my fellow-passengers at breakfast, the following day, the pilot had left us, and a dim, hazy streak of coast in the North-east was the only perceptible vestige of terra firma. As the breeze, which was about two points abaft the beam, was quite moderate, and we were gliding on almost without perceptible motion, there were no absentees from the matin meal, but each, with an appetite sharpened by the pure sea air, was eager to commence an assault on the edibles. The party, exclusive of Captain Gilead, his second in command, and myself, comprised seven persons - four masculine and three feminine- to each of whom the skipper, with much formality, introduced me. And now, most discreet reader, I will do the same kind office by thee; and while we will suppose one of the ladies to be pouring out the chocolate, just whisper in thy ear, sub rosa, a few sketchy hints regarding each individual present, which will enable thee to enjoy their succeeding colloquies with a higher relish, and to enter more completely into the spirit of certain sequent events with the narration of which I propose to tickle the palate of thy imagination.

First, then, let thy fancy embody a long, wiry, lean biped, with a hawk nose, keen dark blue eye, and mahogany complexion; figure to thyself such a man, encased in a shrunken suit of thread-bare azure, with coppery-looking buttons, a huge narcotic excrescence disfiguring his left cheek, and linen that seemed as if washed in what from thence exuded, thrusting out one long bony hand across the table to help the person farthest from him, while grasping in the clenched digits of the other the half-stripped, comb-like skeleton of a smoked herring, and you will have a tolerably correct idea of Captain Gilead doing the attentive at breakfast. The mate, Mr. Fathom, was a thin, shadowy, stupid-looking fellow, perfectly uneccentric and common-place. Not so the gentleman who sat next him, announced as Major Tunley, of the British army. Falstaff might have envied him his broad circumference' Bardolph the intense rubicundity of his incendiary nose. was indeed impossible to look at him and imagine thin potations;' and being of a mathematical turn, the first glance at his countenance