ily
frightened from their propriety, by the appearance of a tall gaunt
Indian, who enters the room unannounced, and is recognised by a
missionary there present as Tokeah, the miko or king of the Oconees, the
principal tribe of the Creek Indians. This Tokeah is one of the most
deadly and persevering enemies of the white men, whom he detests with a
bitter hate, because they have driven his nation from its hunting
grounds. He it was who, seven years previously, gave the little girl in
charge to Copeland and his wife; since then he has regularly sent furs
and beaver-skins as payment for her maintenance, and he now comes to
claim her as his property. Resistance to his demand would be in vain,
for he is backed by an imposing force of Indian warriors; the entreaties
of Mrs Copeland and the missionary are insufficient to turn him from his
purpose, and he takes away the child, who has been christened by the
name of Rosa. The third chapter of the book, which we will now extract,
opens, after a second lapse of seven years, at the latter end of the
year 1814.

At the northern extremity of the Sabine lake, and in the midst of the
reed and cypress swamps that extend southwards to the sea, there lies,
between the rivers Sabine and Natchez, a narrow tongue of land, which,
widening in proportion as the rivers recede, forms a gently swelling
eminence, enclosed by the clear and beautiful waters of the two streams.
The latter flow through dark thickets of cypress and palmetto, to the
lake above named, which, in its turn, is united with the Gulf of Mexico,
and it would almost appear as if nature, in a capricious moment, had
chosen thus distinctly to mark the boundary of the two vast countries
which the Sabine severs. On the right bank of that river rises a black
and impenetrable forest, so thickly matted and united by enormous
thorns, that even the hunted deer or savanna wolf will rarely attempt an
entrance. The earth is overgrown by an impenetrable carpet of creeping
plants, under whose treacherous shelter innumerable rattlesnakes,
king's-heads, and copperheads, writhe themselves, or lie coiled up on
the watch for the wild pigeons, mockingbirds, parroquets, and black
squirrels, who share with them the shelter of the thicket. Rarely is the
maze broken by a clearing, and where it is so, is seen a chaos of
mouldering tree-trunks, uprooted by the frequent tornados, and piled up
like some artificial fortification. The wild luxuriance of the pla