rers returning from the cane-pieces, with their tools on
their shoulders, offered their homage to him as he swept by. Some
shouted, some ran beside him, some kneeled in the road and blessed him,
or asked his blessing. He came to the river, and found the ford lined
by a party of negroes, who, having heard and known his horse's tread,
above the music of pipe and drum, had thrown themselves into the water
to point out the ford, and save his precious moments. He dashed through
uncovered, and was lost in the twilight before their greeting was done.
The evening star was just bright enough to show its image in the still
salt-lake, when he met the expected relay, on the verge of the mountain
woods. Thence the ascent was so steep, that he was obliged to relax his
speed. He had observed the birds winging home to these woods; they had
reached it before him, and the chirp of their welcome to their nests was
sinking into silence; but the whirring beetles were abroad. The frogs
were scarcely heard from the marshes below; but the lizards and crickets
vied with the young monkeys in noise, while the wood was all alight with
luminous insects. Wherever a twisted fantastic cotton-tree, or a
drooping wild fig, stood out from the thicket and apart, it appeared to
send forth streams of green flame from every branch; so incessantly did
the fireflies radiate from every projecting twig.

As he ascended, the change was great. At length there was no more
sound; there were no more flitting fires. Still as sleep rose the
mountain-peaks to the night. Still as sleep lay the woods below. Still
as sleep was the outspread western sea, silvered by the steady stars
which shone, still as sleep, in the purple depths of heaven. Such was
the starlight on that pinnacle, so large and round the silver globes, so
bright in the transparent atmosphere were their arrowy rays, that the
whole, vault was as one constellation of little moons, and the horse and
his rider saw their own shadows in the white sands of their path. The
ridge passed, down plunged the horseman, hurrying to the valley and the
plain; like rocks loosened by the thunder from the mountain-top. The
hunter, resting on the heights from his day's chase of the wild goats,
started from his sleep, to listen to what he took for a threatening of
storm. In a little while, the child in the cottage in the valley
nestled close to its mother, scared at the flying tramp; while the
trembling mother hers