And though they held with us a friendly talk,

The hollow peace-tree fell beneath their tomahawk!

XVI.

"It was encamping on the lake's far port,

A

cry

of Areouski broke our sleep, Where stormed an ambushed foe thy nation's fort, And rapid, rapid whoops came o'er the deep; But long thy country's war-sign on the steep Appeared through ghastly intervals of light, And deathfully their thunder seem'd to sweep, Till utter darkness swallowed up the sight, As if a shower of blood had quenched the fiery fight!

XVII.

"It slept-it rose again—on high their tower
Sprang upward like a torch to light the skies,
Then down again it rained an ember shower,
And louder lamentations heard we rise;
As when the evil Manitou † that dries
Th' Ohio woods, consumes them in his ire,
In vain the desolated panther flies,

*The Indian God of War.

† Manitou, Spirit or Deity.

And howls amidst his wilderness of fire:

Alas! too late, we reached and smote those Hurons

dire!

XVIII.

"But as the fox beneath the nobler hound,
So died their warriors by our battle brand:
And from the tree we, with her child, unbound
A lonely mother of the Christian land :—
Her lord-the captain of the British band-
Amidst the slaughter of his soldiers lay.
Scarce knew the widow our delivering hand;
Upon her child she sobbed, and swooned away,

Or shrieked unto the God to whom the Christians

pray.

XIX.

"Our virgins fed her with their kindly bowls
Of fever-balm and sweet sagamité :
But she was journeying to the land of souls,
And lifted up her dying head to pray
That we should bid an ancient friend convey

Her orphan to his home of England's shore ;

And take, she said, this token far away,

To one that will remember us of

yore,

When he beholds the ring that Waldegrave's Julia

wore.

XX.

"And I, the eagle of my tribe,* have rushed
With this lorn dove."-A sage's self-command
Had quelled the tears from Albert's heart that gushed;
But yet his cheek-his agitated hand-

That showered upon the stranger of the land
No common boon, in grief but ill beguiled
A soul that was not wont to be unmanned;
"And stay," he cried, "dear pilgrim of the wild,
Preserver of my old, my boon companion's child!—

XXI.

"Child of a race whose name my bosom warms
On earth's remotest bounds, how welcome here!
Whose mother oft, a child, has filled these arms,
Young as thyself, and innocently dear ;
Whose grandsire was my early life's compeer.
Ah, happiest home of England's happy clime!
How beautiful e'en now thy scenes appear,
As in the noon and sunshine of my prime!
How gone like yesterday these thrice ten years of time!

*The Indians are distinguished, both personally and by tribes, by the name of particular animals, whose qualities they affect to resemble, either for cunning, strength, swiftness, or other qualities :—as the eagle, the serpent, the fox, or bear.

XXII.

"And, Julia! when thou wert like Gertrude now,
Can I forget thee, favorite child of yore?

Or thought I, in thy father's house, when thou
Wert lightest hearted on his festive floor,
And first of all his hospitable door

To meet and kiss me at my journey's end?

But where was I when Waldegrave was no more?
And thou didst, pale, thy gentle head extend

In woes, that e'en the tribe of deserts was thy friend!"

XXIII.

He said and strained unto his heart the boy :

Far differently the mute Oneida took

-

His calumet of peace, and cup of joy ;*
As monumental bronze unchanged his look;
A soul that pity touched, but never shook;
Trained from his tree-rocked cradle † to his bier
The fierce extremes of good and ill to brook
Impassive-fearing but the shame of fear-
A stoic of the woods-a man without a tear.

*Calumet of peace.-The calumet is the Indian name for the ornamental pipe of friendship, which they smoke as a pledge of amity.

Tree-rocked cradle.-The Indian mothers suspend their children in their cradles from the boughs of trees, and let them be rocked by the wind.

XXIV.

Yet deem not goodness on the savage stock
Of Outalissi's heart disdained to grow ;
As lives the oak unwithered on the rock
By storms above, and barrenness below;
He scorned his own, who felt another's woe;
And ere the wolf-skin on his back he flung,
Or laced his moccasins, in act to go,

A song of parting to the boy he sung,

Who slept on Albert's couch, nor heard his friendly

tongue.

XXV.

"Sleep, wearied one! and in the dreaming land.
Shouldst thou to-morrow with thy mother meet,
Oh! tell her spirit, that the white man's hand
Hath plucked the thorns of sorrow from thy feet;
While I in lonely wilderness shall greet

Thy little footprints-or by traces know

The fountain, where at noon I thought it sweet
To feed thee with the quarry of my bow,

And poured the lotus-horn,* or slew the mountain roe.

* From a flower shaped like a horn, which Chateaubriand presumes to be of the lotus kind, the Indians in their travels through the desert often find a draught of dew purer than any other water.