-d'hote_.

Well do I recollect her, as she stood before us on that glorious
evening, her features beaming with pleasure, as she witnessed the
rapidity with which we emptied our plates. How happy she would look
when we praised her chickens, her honey, and her coffee; and then she
would carve and cut, fill again our cups, and press upon us all the
delicacies of the Far West borders, delicacies unknown in the old
countries; such as fried beaver-tail, smoked tongue of the buffalo-calf,
and (the _gourmand's_ dish _par excellence)_ the Louisiana gombo. Her
coffee, too, was superb, as she was one of the few upon the continent of
America who knew how to prepare it.

After our supper, the captain conducted us under the piazza attached to
the building, where we found eight hammocks suspended, as white as snow.
There our host disinterred from a large bucket of ice several bottles
of Madeira, which we sipped with great delight; the more so as, for our
cane pipes and cheap Cavendish, Finn substituted a box of genuine
Havannah cazadores. After our fatigues and starvation, it was more than
comfortable--it was delightful. The doctor vowed he would become a
planter, the parson asked if there were any widows in the neighbourhood,
and the lawyers inquired if the planters of the vicinity were any way
litigious. By the bye, I have observed that Captain Finn was a
celebrated character. As we warmed with the _Madere frappe a glace_, we
pressed him to relate some of his wild adventures, with which request he
readily complied; for he loved to rehearse his former exploits, and it
was not always that he could narrate them to so numerous an assembly.
As the style he employed could only be understood by individuals who
have rambled upon the borders of the Far West, I will relate the little
I remember in my own way, though I am conscious that the narrative must
lose much when told by any one but Finn himself.

When quite an infant, he had been taken by the Indians and carried into
the fastnesses of the West Virginian forests; there he had been brought
up till he was sixteen years old, when, during an Indian war, he was
recaptured by a party of white men. Who were his parents, he could
never discover, and a kind Quaker took him into his house, gave him his
name, and treated him as his own child, sending him first to school, and
then to the Philadelphia college. The young man, however, was little
fit for the restrictions of a university; he