6. Now to the King of kings we'll raise More loud than sounds the swelling breeze, LESSON LXXIV. WESTERN EMIGRATION. HUMPHREYS. [The reader may scan the following piece, and tell to what kind f poetry, and to what form it belongs. See page 68.] 1. 2 3. WITH all that's ours, together let us rise, And nature blossoms in her virgin pride; Where all that Beauty's hand can form to please, The shady coverts and the sunny hills, Await you there; and heaven shall bless the toil; There cities rise, and spiry towns increase, And robe with verdure all the genial soil. Paan; a song of triumph. b Villa; a country seat, or farm, 4. 5. There shall rich Commerce court the favoring gales Where the bold ships the stormy Huron brave, And thou, Supreme! whose hand sustains this bail Propitious smile, and shed diviner charms On this blest land, the queen of arts and arms; LESSON LXXV. THE INDIAN, AS HE WAS, AND AS HE IS. SPRAGUE. 1. Nor many generations ago, where you now sit cncled with all that exalts and embellishes civilized life, the rank thistle nodded in the wind, and the wild fox dug his hole unscared. Here lived and loved another race of beings Beneath the same sun that rolls over your heads, the Indian hunter pursued the panting deer; gazing on the same moon that smiles for you, the Indian lover wooed his dusky mate. 2. Here the wigwam blaze beamed on the tender and helpless, the council-fire glared on the wise and daring. Now they paddled the light canoe along your rocky shores. Here they warred; the echoing whoop, the bloody grapple, the defying death-song, all were here; and when the tiger strife was over, here curled the smoke of peace. 3. Here, too, they worshiped; and from many a dark bosom went up a pure prayer to the Great Spirit. He had not writ a On-tă'ri-o. b Mis-sis-sip'pe. The origin of the Inaians in this country is un. The most reasonable supposition seems to be, that they came over from the eastern continent by way of Bhering's strait. known. ten his laws for them on tables of stone, but he had traced them on the tables of their hearts. The poor child of nature knew not the God of revelation, but the God of the universe he acknowledged in every thing around. 4. He beheld him in the star that sunk in beauty behind his lonely dwelling; in the sacred orb that flamed on him from his mid-day throne; in the flower that snapped in the morning breeze; in the lofty pine, that defied a thousand whirlwinds; in the timid warbler, that never left his native grove; in the fearless eagle, whose untired pinion was wet in clouds; in the worm that crawled at his feet; and in his own matchless form, glowing with a spark of that light, to whose mysterious Source he bent in humble, though blind, adoration. 5. And all this has passed away. Across the ocean came a pilgrim bark, bearing the seeds of life and death. The former were sown for you; the latter sprang up in the path of the simple native. Two hundred years have changed the character of a great continent, and blotted forever from its face a whole peculiar people. Art has usurped the bowers of nature, and the anointed children of education have been too powerful for the tribes of the ignorant. 6. Here and there a stricken few remain; but how unlike their bold, untamed, untameable progenitors! The Indian of falcon glance and lion bearing, the theme of the touching ballad, the hero of the pathetic tale, is gone! and his degraded offspring crawl upon the soil where he walked in majesty, to remind us how miserable is man, when the foot of the conqueror is on his neck. 7. As a race, they have withered from the land. Their arrows are broken, their springs are dried up, their cabins in the dust. Their council-fire has long since gone out on the shore, and their war-cry is fast dying to the untrodden west. Slowly and sadly they climb the distant mountains, and read their doom in the setting sun. They are shrinking before the mighty tide which is pressing them away; they must soon hear the roar of the last wave, which will settle over them forever. 8. Ages hence, the inquisitive white man, as he stands by some growing city, will ponder on the structure of their disturbed remains, and wonder to what manner of person they belonged. They will live only in the songs and chronicles of their exterminators. Let these be faithful to their rude virtues as men, and pay due tribute to their unhappy fate as a people. LESSON LXXVI. THE CAPTIVE CHIEF. 1. PALE was the hue of his faded cheek, For he thought of the days when his restless foot 2 He had stood in the deadly ambuscade, While his warriors were falling around him; Had joyed in the post of danger; But his spirit was crushed by the dungeon's gloom, hair 3. I will go to my tent, and lie down in despair; LESSON LXXVII. MAMMOTH CAVE IN KENTUCKY. 1. Now, reader, if you will take my hand and use my eyes a little while, I will render you all the aid I can in seeing such wonders as would attract millions of beholders, if they were near the banks of the Hudson or the Thames, instead of the beautiful Kentucky "Green River." 2. Down the main branch we go, then, for two miles, stopping by the way at "the Doctor's House," to leave our hats, wearing handkerchiefs instead, till we reach the "Steamboat," an immense rock bearing that name. Just behind this is an avenue, with a narrow mouth, which you descend, stooping for some rods, and pursue for two miles or more. 3. You pass, on your way, by a narrow and slippery path, "the bottomless pit," a frightful chasm one hundred and sixty feet in depth; down which we hurled rocks and stones, that were several seconds in reaching the bottom, with fainter and fainter reverberations from the rocky cliffs below. Near this is "the Dead Sea," at the side of which you descend by a ladder several feet. 4. You leave this branch and ascend again, till you enter the "winding way," which is one hundred and five yards long, and one of the most crooked, zigzag paths that can be conceived. The roof is not more than four and a half feet high, and the path, which at some day seems to have been a water-channel, is about fifteen or twenty inches wide; the sides rising about two and a half feet perpendicularly, but hollowed out sufficiently above that, to admit the free use of the arms. A man of ordinary size can easily thread this labyrinth. 5. Hurrying past a clear, beautiful cascade, descending some thirty feet from the roof, we reach the "river Styx," a Doctor's House; a name given to one of the apartments of this cave. b These names are given in consequence of some resemblance they bear to other objects, or in honor of some distinguished person. c So named from the mythological river Styx, of which Char'on was ferryman. |