and I endeavoured, but in vain, to dissuade him from it. About
noon we arrived at the quarter of Golden Dust. He rushed down to the
sea-shore, opposite to the spot where the Saint-Geran had been wrecked.
At the sight of the isle of Amber, and its channel, when smooth as
a mirror, he exclaimed,--"Virginia! oh my dear Virginia!" and fell
senseless. Domingo and I carried him into the woods, where we had some
difficulty in recovering him. As soon as he regained his senses, he
wished to return to the sea-shore; but we conjured him not to renew his
own anguish and ours by such cruel remembrances, and he took another
direction. During a whole week he sought every spot where he had once
wandered with the companion of his childhood. He traced the path by
which she had gone to intercede for the slave of the Black River. He
gazed again upon the banks of the river of the Three Breasts, where she
had rested herself when unable to walk further, and upon that part of
the wood where they had lost their way. All the haunts, which recalled
to his memory the anxieties, the sports, the repasts, the benevolence
of her he loved,--the river of the Sloping Mountain, my house, the
neighbouring cascade, the papaw tree she had planted, the grassy fields
in which she loved to run, the openings of the forest where she used to
sing, all in succession called forth his tears; and those very echoes
which had so often resounded with their mutual shouts of joy, now
repeated only these accents of despair,--"Virginia! oh, my dear
Virginia!"

During this savage and wandering life, his eyes became sunk and hollow,
his skin assumed a yellow tint, and his health rapidly declined.
Convinced that our present sufferings are rendered more acute by the
bitter recollection of bygone pleasures, and that the passions gather
strength in solitude, I resolved to remove my unfortunate friend from
those scenes which recalled the remembrance of his loss, and to lead him
to a more busy part of the island. With this view, I conducted him to
the inhabited part of the elevated quarter of Williams, which he had
never visited, and where the busy pursuits of agriculture and commerce
ever occasioned much bustle and variety. Numbers of carpenters were
employed in hewing down and squaring trees, while others were sawing
them into planks; carriages were continually passing and repassing on
the roads; numerous herds of oxen and troops of horses were feeding on
those wide-spread meadows