But where are they? Where are the villagers, and warriors, and youth; the sachems and the tribes; the hunters and their families? They have perished. They are consumed. The wasting pestilence has not alone done the mighty work. No, nor famine, nor war. There has been a mightier power, a moral canker, which has eaten into their heart-cores-a plague, which the touch of the white man communicated-a poison which betrayed them into a lingering ruin. The winds of the Atlantic fan not a single region which they may now call their own. Already the last feeble remnants of the race are preparing for their journey beyond the Mississippi. I see them leave their miserable homes-the aged, the helpless, the women, and the warriors-" few and faint, yet fearless still." The ashes are cold on their native hearths. The smoke no longer curls round their lowly cabins. They move on with a slow, unsteady step. The white man is upon their heels, for terror or despatch; but they heed him not. They turn to take a last look at their deserted villages. They cast a last glance upon the graves of their fathers. They shed no tears; they utter no cries; they heave no groans. There is something in their hearts which passes speech. There is something in their looks, not of vengeance or submission, but of hard necessity, which stifles both; which chokes all utterance; which has no aim nor method. It is courage absorbed in despair. They linger but for a moment. Their look is onward. They have passed the fatal stream. It shall never be repassed by them-no, never. Yet there lies not between us and them an impassable gulf. They know and feel that there is for them still one remove farther, not distant, nor unseen. It is to the general burial-ground of their race.

Reason as we may, it is impossible not to read in such a fate much that we know not how to interpret; much of provocation to cruel deeds and deep resentments; much of apology for wrong and perfidy; much of pity mingling with indignation; much of doubt and misgiving as to the past; much of painful recollections; much of dark forebodings.

INDIAN NAMES.

LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY.

YE

E say they all have passed away-that noble race and brave, That their light canoes have vanished from off the crested wave;

That, 'mid the forests where they roamed, there rings no hunter's

shout,

But their name is on your waters-ye may not wash it out.
'Tis where Ontario's billow like ocean's surge is curled,
Where strong Niagara's thunders wake the echo of the world;
Where red Missouri bringeth rich tribute from the west,
And Rappahannock sweetly sleeps on green Virginia's breast.
Ye say their cone-like cabins, that clustered o'er the vale,
Have fled away like withered leaves, before the autumn's gale;
But their memory liveth on your hills, their baptism on your shore,
Your everlasting rivers speak their dialect of yore.
Old Massachusetts wears it upon her lordly crown,

And broad Ohio bears it amid his young renown;

Connecticut hath wreathed it where her quiet foliage waves,
And bold Kentucky breathes it hoarse through all her ancient caves.
Wachusett hides its lingering voice within his rocky heart,
And Alleghany graves its tone throughout his lofty chart;
Monadnock on his forehead hoar doth seal the sacred trust;
Your mountains build their monument, though ye destroy their dust.
Ye call those red-browed brethren the insects of an hour,
Crushed like the noteless worm amid the regions of their power;
Ye drive them from their fathers' lands, ye break of faith the seal,
But can ye from the court of heaven exclude their last appeal?
Ye see their unresisting tribes, with toilsome steps and slow,
On through the trackless desert pass, a caravan of woe.
Think ye the Eternal Ear is deaf? His sleepless vision dim?
Think ye the soul's blood may not cry from that far land to Him?

WIT

DEATH OF KING PHILIP.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

WITH a scanty band of followers, who still remained true to his desperate fortunes, the unhappy Philip wandered back to Mount Hope, the ancient dwelling of his fathers. Here he lurked about like a spectre, among scenes of former power and prosperity, now bereft of home, of family, and friends. There needs no better picture of his destitute and piteous situation than that furnished by the homely pen of the chronicler, who is unwarily enlisting the feelings of the reader in favor of the hapless warrior whom he reviles. "Philip," he says, "like a savage wild beast, having been hunted by the English forces through the woods, above a hundred miles backward and forward, at last was driven to his own den upon Mount Hope, where he retired, with a few of his best friends, into a swamp which proved but a prison to keep him fast till the messengers of death came by divine permission to execute vengeance upon him."

Even in this last refuge of desperation and despair, a sullen grandeur gathers round his memory. We picture him to ourselves, seated among his careworn followers, brooding in silence over his blasted fortunes, and acquiring a savage sublimity from the wildness and dreariness of his lurking-place. Defeated, but not dismayed, crushed to the earth but not humiliated, he seemed to grow more haughty beneath disaster, and to experience a fierce satisfaction in draining the last dregs of bitterness.

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune, but great minds rise above it. The very idea of submission awakened the fury of Philip, and he smote to death one of his followers who proposed an expedient of peace. The brother of the victim made his escape, and in revenge betrayed the retreat of his chieftain. A body of white men and Indians were immediately dispatched to the swamp where Philip lay crouched, glaring with fury and despair. Before he was aware of their approach, they had begun to

surround him. In a little while he saw five of his trustiest followers laid dead at his feet; all resistance was vain; he rushed forth from his covert, and made a headlong attempt to escape, but was shot through the heart by a renegade Indian of his own nation.

Such is the scanty story of the brave but unfortunate King Philip; persecuted while living, slandered and dishonored when dead. If, however, we consider even the prejudiced anecdotes furnished us by his enemies, we may perceive in them traces of amiable and lofty character sufficient to awaken sympathy for his fate, and respect for his memory. We find that, amidst all the harassing cares and ferocious passions of constant warfare, he was alive to the softer feelings of connubial love and paternal tenderness, and to the generous sentiment of friendship. The captivity of his "beloved wife and only son" is mentioned with exultation as causing him poignant misery; the death of any near friend is triumphantly recorded as a new blow on his sensibilities; but the treachery and desertion of many of his followers, in whose affections he had confided, is said to have desolated his heart, and to have bereaved him of all further comfort.

He was a patriot attached to his native soil, a prince true to his subjects and indignant of their wrongs, a soldier daring in battle, firm in adversity, patient of fatigue, of hunger, of every variety of bodily suffering, and ready to perish in the cause he had espoused. Proud of heart, and with an untamable love of natural liberty, he preferred to enjoy it among the beasts of the forest, or in the dismal and famished recesses of swamps and morasses, rather than bow his haughty spirit to submission, and live dependent and despised in the ease and luxury of the settlements. With heroic qualities and bold achievements that would have graced a civilized warrior, and have rendered him the theme of the poet and the historian, he lived a wanderer and a fugitive in his native land, and went down, like a lonely bark foundering amid darkness and tempest, without a pitying eye to weep his fall, or a friendly hand to record his struggle.

THE INDIAN HUNTER.

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

HEN the summer harvest was gathered in,

WHE

And the sheaf of the gleaner grew white and thin,

And the ploughshare was in its furrow left,

Where the stubble land had been lately cleft,

An Indian hunter with unstrung bow,

Looked down where the valley lay stretched below.
He was a stranger there, and all that day
Had been out on the hills-a perilous way;
But the foot of the deer was far and fleet,
And the wolf kept aloof from the hunter's feet;
And bitter feelings passed o'er him then,
As he stood by the populous haunts of men.

The winds of autumn came over the woods,
As the sun stole out from their solitudes;
The moss was white on the maple's trunk,
And dead from its arms the pale vine shrunk;
And ripened the mellow fruit hung, and red,
Where the trees withered leaves around it shed.
The foot of the reaper moved slow on the lawn,
And the sickle cut down the yellow corn;
The mower sung loud by the meadow side,
When the mists of evening were spreading wide;
And the voice of the herdsman came up the lea,
And the dance went round by the greenwood tree.
Then the hunter turned away from that scene,
Where the home of his fathers once had been,
And heard, by the distant and measured stroke,
That the woodman hewed down the giant oak;
And burning thoughts flashed over his mind,
Of the white man's faith and love unkind.