g of
awe, as though he were a superior being communing with the Great Spirit.
This feeling gradually wearing off, the captors insisted upon his death,
as an expiation for the many injuries they had experienced at the hands
of the whites. The tribe meet, the block is prepared, the captive's neck
is laid ready, the upraised tomahawk, held by a brawny Indian arm, whose
every muscle quivers with revenge, glitters in the sunbeams; swarthy
figures around, thirsting for blood, anxiously await the sacrifice of
the victim, already too long delayed. Hope has fled from the captive's
breast, and he is communing in earnest with the Great Spirit into whose
presence he is about to be so sadly and speedily ushered. Suddenly a
shriek is heard! At that well-known voice the savage arm falls helpless
at its side, as, stretched upon the neck of the despairing captive, lies
the lovely daughter of Powhattan, with tearful eye, and all the wild
energy of her race, vowing she will not survive the butchery of her
kindest friend. Ruthless hands would tear her away, and complete the
bloody tragedy. Who dares lay even a finger upon the noble daughter of
their adored chief? They stand abashed, revenge and doubt striving in
their hearts; the eloquence of love and mercy pleading irresistibly from
the eyes of Pocahontas. The tomahawk, upraised by man's revenge for the
work of a captive's death, descends, when moved by woman's tears, to cut
a captive's bonds.

Callous indeed must that man's heart be, who can gaze upon the spot
where the noble Pocahontas--reared among savages, 'mid the solemn
grandeur of the forest, and beneath, the broad canopy of heaven, with no
Gospel light to guide and soften--received the holy impulses of love and
mercy fresh from her Maker's hand; and how gratifying to remember, that
she who had thus early imbibed these sacred feelings, became soon after
a convert to Christianity. Alas! how short her Christian career.
Marrying Mr. J. Rolfe, she died in childbirth ere she had reached her
twenty-fifth year, and from her many of the oldest families in Virginia
at this day have their origin. Virginia, as is well known, has always
been considered an aristocratic State; and it is a kind of joke--in
allusion to this Indian origin--for other States to speak disparagingly
of the F.F.Vs.--_alias_ first families of Virginia. Let those who sneer,
seek carefully amid their musty ancestral rolls for a nobler heart than
that of Pocahontas, the joy