however, had
visibly made a deep impression upon the Miko, and he remained for a
while sunk in reflection. Tokeah was a savage by birth, habit, and
education; but he was neither bloodthirsty nor cruel. Under other
circumstances, and in a civilized land, he might have been a hero, a
benefactor of thousands or millions of his fellow-creatures; but in his
wild condition, despised, goaded and insulted as he felt himself, his
better feelings blunted, and his whole nature soured by real and fancied
injuries, what wonder was it that he raised his knife even against his
own daughter, entering the hut as he did with the full persuasion that
the young man she had sheltered was a spy and emissary of his bitterest
foes?

The account given of himself by the midshipman, and the imputations cast
by him on the chief of the Salt Lake, as Lafitte is called by the
Indians, receive strong confirmation from two handbills, which Tokeah,
who has learned to read English in the course of his long intercourse
with the white men, has torn, during his recent expedition, from a wall
in one of the new Louisianian settlements. One of these papers is a
proclamation by the authorities of Louisiana, enumerating the crimes and
cruelties of the pirate of Barataria, and offering a reward of five
hundred dollars for his head. The other is an address to the citizens of
the state, summoning them to the defence of their country against the
British. Notwithstanding this corroborative evidence of the correctness
of his daughter's statement, Tokeah, unwilling to remain with the
smallest doubt upon his mind, or to risk the discovery of the nook in
which, for seven years, he has been unseen by an American eye, sets off
with a party of warriors in pursuit of the young Englishman. The ensuing
chapter, the last of the first volume, we will translate with small
abridgement, and therewith, for the present, conclude our extracts.

The mood of mind in which we left our young Englishman may aptly be
compared with that of the assassin neophytes, whom, according to the
tale, the Old Man of the Mountain was wont to introduce into an
enchanted garden, peopled with ravishing houris, whence, after a short
enjoyment of the most voluptuous delights, he again thrust them forth
into the dark and dismal night of the desert, with nothing remaining of
their past pleasures save a wild confusion of the senses, a chaos of
images and visions, and a burning desire to recover the lost parad