with groves of the most beautiful and odoriferous of the southern flowering trees. These charming streams are shaded with the most fragrant and delightful of the flowering shrubs and vines. Here nature throws around her riches with an unsparing hand and a wonderful exuberance of luxury. Birds of the most brilliant plumage and enchanting melody fill all the summer groves, at early morn and eve, with their perfect music. Flowers of countless varieties, and most beautiful forms and hues, laden all the air with their ambrosial perfume. The breeze is charged with music and fragrance, as from the spicy groves of Araby the Blest.

If in this garden-this conservatory of Nature, where all her choicest luxuries are assembled-there is one spot more favoured than all the rest, it is "Cash. mere," the beautiful seat of Clement Sutherland.

The brothers Sutherland emigrated from the old dominion, and settled on the Pearl river, in those palmy days of cotton-planting, when every planter seemed a very Midas, turning all he touched to gold, and when the foundations were laid of some of the present enormous southern fortunes. It was no love for the land of sun that brought the Sutherlands there. They had heard that the common annual profits of the cotton crops were from ten to eighty thousand dollars, and they had sold their tobacco plantation on the Potomac, and emigrated to the valley of the Pearl. The spot selected by the brothers was that Eden of the valley where the Pearl river turns with a serpentine bend in the form of an S with an additional curve, shaping the land into two round points to the west, and one-the largest and loveliest-to the east.

The east point had been taken up by Clement Sutherland, the eldest of the brothers, and the west points. by the two others. Thus Clement Sutherland's plantation lay embosomed between those of his brethren. On the upper side lay that of Mark, the second brother, and on the lower, that of Paul, the third and bachelor brother.

Very early in life, and some years previous to their emigration, Mark Sutherland had been united in marriage to a lady of St. Mary's-one of the noblest of Maryland's noble daughters. From her, their only son, Mark Sutherland, the younger, inherited a strong mind, warm heart, and high spirit; from his father he took the stalwart form, athletic strength, and dark and sometimes terrible beauty, that marked the race of Sutherland.

Clement Sutherland had remained unmarried until long after his settlement upon the Pearl. But one autumn, while on a visit to New Orleans, to negotiate the sale of his cotton, he chanced to meet a beautiful West Indian girl, whom he afterwards wooed and won for his bride. Whether the sweet Havanienne, or the large fortune of which she was the sole heiress, was the object of his worship, was a mooted point by those who knew him best. It is probable he adored both. Certainly no slightest wish or whim of the lovely Creole remained unsatisfied. It was she who gave the charming scene of his home the appropriate name of Cashmere. She it was who persuaded him to pause in his incessant, exclusive thinking, talking, and acting, about cotton-growing, and his mad pursuit of gain, to build and adorn an elegant villa upon the site of the temporary framed house to which he

had brought the beautiful epicurienne. Her rare artistic taste presided over the architecture and embellishment of the mansion, and the laying out and ornamenting of the grounds. But here the evanescent energy of the indolent West Indian died out. She was, at best, but a lovely and fragile spring flower, that faded and fell ere the summer of her life had come. She left a child of perfect beauty-a little girl-who inherited her mother's graceful harmony of form and complexion, and her father's strength and vigour of constitution.

Immediately after the death of her mother, the orphaned infant had been taken home by her aunt, Mrs. Mark Sutherland, to share the maternal cares bestowed upon her only son. The lady gave herself up to the rearing and education of these children. And not the noble mother of the Gracchi was prouder of her "jewels" than Mrs. Sutherland of hers. Thus the infancy and childhood of Mark and Hinda were passed together-the same mother's heart, the same nursery, the same school-room, nay, the same book, with their heads together, and their black and golden locks mingled, were shared by the children. And no Guinea mice or turtle doves were ever fonder of each other than our boy and girl.

It was a woful day when they were first separated -Mark to enter college, and Hinda to be placed at a fashionable boarding-school. Tears fell on both sides, like spring showers. Young Mark, when laughed at for his girlish tears, angrily rejoined, that it was no shame to weep; that the renowned hero, Achilles, had wept when they took Briseis away from him, also when his friend Patroclus was slain.

Paul Sutherland, the third brother, had remained up to the present time unmarried, with the determination to continue so until the end of his life. He bestowed his affections with paternal pride and devotion upon his niece and nephew, resolving to make them his joint heirs, and with his own large property swell the enormous bulk of theirs. Just two years previous to the opening of our story, the Pearl river trio had been broken by the death of Mark Sutherland, the elder. Young Sutherland had hastened home to console his widowed mother, but not long did the widow permit him to remain. The lady sent him back at the commencement of the next following term.

But it is time to describe more particularly Cashmere, the charming seat of Clement Sutherland, and the principal scene of our drama. The estate itself was a very extensive one, comprising several thousand acres of the richest land in the vale. That part of the plantation on which the villa had been erected lay in a bend of the Pearl river, surrounded on three, sides-north, east, and south-by its pellucid waters. The whole of this area is occupied by the mansion and ornamental grounds.

The villa itself is a very elegant edifice of white freestone, fronting the river. The building is long and broad, in proportion to its height-this being the necessary plan of all southern mansions, to save them from the effects of the terrible tornadoes that sweep over the country, and to which a higher elevation would expose them. But the mansion is relieved from all appearance of heaviness, by a light and elegant Ionic colonnade, sustaining an open verandah run

ning around three sides of the building. On the fourth side, looking to the south, the aspect is diver sified by a large bay window projecting from the lower story, and an elegant Venetian balcony from the upper one.

The villa, is also shaded on three sides-north, west, and south-by a grove of the most beautiful and fragrant of the southern trees-the splendid tulip-poplar, lifting to the skies its slender shaft, crested with elegantly-shaped leaves of the most brilliant and intense verdure, and crowned with its bell-shaped flowers of the most vivid and gorgeous flame colour; the beautiful cotton-wood tree, softly powdered over with its formless snowy blossoms; the queenly magnolia-grandiflora, with its glittering green foliage and dazzling white flowers and rich oppressive aroma; the pretty red-bud, with its umbrella-shaped top, its crumpled, heart-shaped leaves, and scarlet tufts; the bois-d'arc, in full bloom, the most splendid and magnificent of ornamental trees, uniting the rarest qualities of the orange tree and the catalpa; the chinienne, with its vivid green foliage and brilliant purple flowers, dropping delicious but heavy narcotic odours, weighing down the nerves and brain into luxurious repose, and stupefying the very birds that shelter in its aromatic shades, so that they may be taken captive with the bare hand; the imperial catalpa, sovereign of the grove by virtue of the grandeur and elegance of its form, the grace and beauty of its foliage, and the ambrosial perfume of its flowers, filling all the air around with its delightful fragrance; and many, many others, so various, beautiful, and aromatic, that one is lost and entranced amid the luxuriating wealth