purpose these young men presented themselves. Luis de Moscoso replied, that the governor was not dead, but gone to heaven, and had chosen some of his Christian followers to attend him there; he therefore prayed Guachoya to receive again the two Indian youths, and to renounce so barbarous a custom for the future. He accordingly set the Indians at liberty on the spot, and ordered them to return to their homes; but one of them refused to go, saying he would not serve a master who had condemned him to death without a cause, but would ever follow one who had saved his life.

13. De Soto's effects, consisting in all of two slaves, three horses, and seven hundred swine, were disposed of at public sale. The slaves and horses were sold for three thousand crowns each; the money to be paid by the purchaser on the first discovery of any gold or silver mines, or as soon as he should be proprietor of a plantation in Florida. Should neither of these events come to pass, the buyer pledged himself to pay the money within a year. The swine were sold in like manner, at two hundred crowns apiece. Henceforth, the greater number of the soldiers possessed this desirable article of food, which they ate of on all days save Fridays, Saturdays, and the eves of festivals, which they rigidly observed, according to the customs of the Roman Catholics. This abstinence they were not able to practice before, as they were frequently without meat for two or three months together, and when they found any were glad to devour it, without regard to days.

[After vainly trying to reach Mexico through the forests, the remnant of his followers built seven frail barks, and sailed down the Mississippi, reaching the Gulf of Mexico in seventeen days. They then sailed along the coast of Mexico, and, after a voyage of about fifty days, finally arrived at a Spanish settlement (Sept. 10, 1543).

The word Mississippi is a corrupted Indian name (Miche Sepe), meaning, literally, "Father of Waters." After the events above related, no farther exploration of the river or of its adjacent regions was made until the French, under La Salle, explored the valley, descending the river as far as its mouth in 1691, eight years after which En attempt at settlement was made by Iberville. This region was named Louisiana, în honor of Louis XIV., King of France.]

The Marriage of Pocahontas.-Bancroft.

[From the "History of the United States."]

[Virginia was first permanently settled at Jamestown, in 1607. Distinguished among those connected with the enterprise was Captain John Smith, who, while engaged in an exploring expedition, was captured by the Indians and condemned by their chief, Powhatan', to death. According to the statement of Smith, his life was saved by Poca. hontas, the youthful daughter of the chief, who, as his head was bowed to receive the strokes of the tomahawk, clung firmly to his neck, and thus prevented his execution. Moved by her entreaties, the savage council spared the white captive, and finally released him. The details of this story have been recently discredited; but the subsequent mar. riage of Pocahontas is matter of authentic history.]

1. A FORAGING party of the colonists, headed by Argall, having stolen the daughter of Powhatan, demanded of her father a ransom. The indignant chief prepared rather for hostilities. But John Rolfe, "an honest and discreet" young Englishman, an amiable enthusiast who had emigrated to the forests of Virginia, daily, hourly, and, as it were, in his very sleep, heard a voice crying in his ears that he should strive to make her a Christian.

2. With the solicitude of a troubled soul, he reflected on the true end of being. "The Holy Spirit"-such are his own expressions "demanded of me why I was created;" and conscience whispered that, rising above "the censure of the lowminded," he should lead the blind on the right path. Yet still he remembered that God had visited the sons of Levi and Israel with his displeasure, because they sanctified strange women; and might he, indeed, unite himself with "one of barbarous breeding and of a cursed race?"

3. After a great struggle of mind, and daily and believing prayers, in the innocence of pious zeal, he resolved "to labor for the conversion of the unregenerated maiden;" and, winning the favor of Po-ca-hon'tas, he desired her in marriage. Quick of comprehension, the youthful princess received instruction. with docility; and soon, in the little church of Jamestown,which rested on rough pine columns, fresh from the forest, and was in a style of rugged architecture as wild, if not as frail, as an Indian's wigwam,-she stood before the font, that out of the

trunk of a tree, "had been hewn hollow like a canoe," openly renounced her country's idolatry, professed the faith of Jesus Christ, and was baptized.

4. "The gaining of this one soul, the first-fruits of Virginian conversion," was followed by her nuptials with Rolfe. In April, 1613, to the joy of Sir Thomas Dale, with the approbation of her father and friends, O-pa-chis'co, her uncle, gave the bride away; and she stammered before the altar her marriage vows, according to the rites of the English service. Every historian commemorates the union with approbation; distinguished men trace from it their descent.

5. In 1616, the Indian wife, instructed in the English language, and bearing an English name, "the first Christian ever of her nation," sailed with her husband for England. The daughter of the wilderness possessed the mild elements of female loveliness, half concealed, as if in the bud, and rendered the more beautiful by the childlike simplicity with which her education in the savannahs of the New World had invested her.

6. How could she fail to be caressed at court, and admired in the city? As a wife, and as a mother, her conduct was exemplary. She had been able to contrast the magnificence of European life with the freedom of the western forests; and now, as she was preparing to return to America, at the age of twenty-two, she fell a victim to the English climate,-saved, as if by the hand of mercy, from beholding the extermination of the tribes from which she sprung, leaving a spotless name, and dwelling in memory under the form of perpetual youth.

7. The immediate fruits of the marriage to the colony were a confirmed peace, not with Powhatan alone, but also with the powerful Chickahominies, who sought the friendship of the English, and demanded to be called Englishmen. It might have seemed that the European and the native races were about to become blended; yet no such result ensued. The English and the Indians remained at variance, and the weakest gradually disappeared.

:

Death of Pocahontas.-Sigourney.

[From a poem entitled "Pocahontas."]

1. SUNSET in England at the autumn prime!

Through foliage rare, what floods of light were sent!
The full and whitening harvest knew its time,
And to the sickle of the reaper bent;

Forth rode the winged seeds upon the gale,
New homes to find; but she, with lips so pale,

Who on the arm of her belovèd leant,

Breathed words of tenderness, with smile serene,

Though faint and full of toil the gasp and groan between.

2. "Oh dearest friend, Death cometh! He is here,
Here at my heart! Air! air! that I may speak
My hoarded love, my gratitude sincere,

To thee and to thy people. But I seek
In vain. Though most unworthy, yet I hear
A call, a voice too bless'd for mortal car;"

And with a marble coldness on her cheek,
And one long moan, like breaking harp-string sweet,
She bare th' unspoken love to her Redeemer's feet.

3. Gone? Gone? Alas! the burst of wild despair
That rent his bosom who had loved so well;
He had not yet put forth his strength to bear,
So suddenly and sore the death-shaft fell:
Man hath a god-like might in danger's hour,
In the red battle, or the tempest's power;

Yet is he weak when tides of anguish swell;
Ah, who can mark with cold and tearless eyes
The grief of stricken man when his sole idol dies

4. And she had fled, in whom his heart's deep joy
Was garnered up; fled, like the rushing flame,
And left no farewell for her fair young boy.
Lo! in his nurse's arms he careless came,

A noble creature, with his full dark eye
And clustering curls, in nature's majesty;

But, with a sudden shrick, his mother's name
Burst from his lips, and, gazing on the clay,

He stretched his eager arms where the cold sleeper lay.

5. "Oh, mother! mother!" Did that bitter cry
Send a shrill echo through the realm of death?
Look, to the trembling fringes of the eye,

List, the sharp shudder of returning breath,
The spirit's sob! They lay him on her breast;
One long, long kiss on his bright brow she press'd;
Even from heaven's gate of bliss she lingereth,
To breathe one blessing o'er his precious head,
And then her arm unclasps, and she is of the dead.

6. The dead! the sainted dead! Why should we weep
At the last change their settled features take?
At the calm impress of that holy sleep

Which care and sorrow never more shall break?
Believe we not His word who rends the tomb,

And bids the slumberers from that transient gloom
In their Redeemer's glorious image wake?

Approach we not the same sepulchral bourne

Swift as the shadow fleets? What time have we to mourn ?

7. Like the fallen leaves those forest tribes have fled:

Deep 'neath the turf their rusted weapon lies;

No more their harvest lifts its golden head,

Nor from their shaft the stricken red deer flies: But from the far, far west, where holds, so hoarse, The lonely Oregon its rock-strewn course,

While old Pacific's sullen surge replies,

Are heard their exiled murmurings deep and low,
Like one whose smitten soul departeth full of woe.

8. The council-fires are quench'd that erst so red

Their midnight volume 'mid the groves entwined;
King, stately chief, and warrior host are dead,
Nor remnant nor memorial left behind:

But thou, O forest princess, true of heart,
When o'er our fathers waved destruction's dart,

Shalt in their children's loving hearts be shrined;
Pure, lonely star, o'er dark oblivion's wave,

It is not meet thy name should moulder in the grave.