Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846

Upborne magnificent; when, rising slow,
Th' emerging figure stands, all white as snow,
Like some large albatross his arms outspreads,
O'er all that mighty, silent, sea of heads!
Thrice waves his wings, the voiceless blessing sends
Far, far away to earth's remotest ends!
The joyous news th' impatient cannon tells,
Louder and louder, as the discord swells,
Of clashing bands, and shouts, and drums, and loud-tongued bells!"

Birboniana

In England, we have our trades and our professions; – abroad, all callings are trades; medicine is a trade; theology a trade; law no better. With us, the title of professor carries with it something of rank, being always conferred by authority, and not, as in Italy, a dignity at once self-imposed and assumed by any party who chooses to adopt it. Furthermore, at home it must be a grave subject indeed that is entitled to the honour of being represented by a professor; whilst abroad, the commonest accomplishments are raised to the dignity which we restrict to science; and every private teacher of fencing, fiddling, juggling, and dancing, affixes professor to his card. The art of cheating, ingannazione, seems to be at present the only one in Italy irrepresented, eo nomine, by a teacher. Whether it be that there is properly no such art, but, as was formerly alleged of rhetoric, that every man persuades best in the subject of his own craft, the principles of cheating in like manner vary with the occupation of the cheater; or because, where all men are more or less proficients, the instructions of a professor may be dispensed with. Nevertheless, if mere pre-eminence in the dark dexterity of imposing on one's neighbour deserved this coronal, whose brows were fitter to wear it than yours, ye professors of natural history and of virtù, with whom ingannation is but a collateral branch of these your severer studies? The very name of naturalist, which in England falls so refreshingly on our ears, accustomed as we are to link with it the memory of such men as White, Ray, Derham, Darwin, Paley, and a host of others, there, is but too frequently bestowed on a class of dishonest collectors, who fill their rooms (which they dub their museum) with a collection of modern mummies, and study nature but to jocky amateurs in the sale of her specimens! Nor is the man called antiquaro in Italy, a whit a better representative of him whom we so designate, than is the soi-disant professor of taxidermy and seller of embalmed pole-cats of our own naturalist. Not that our thoroughbred antiquary at home stands high in our classification of English citizens. It was not as a reward for tracing sites, by following the vestiges of dry rubbish near a place ending in chester, that the mural crown (probably a chaplet of wallflowers) was devised by the Romans; and we, too, have a weakness for ranging the precedents of our fellow-citizens according to their usefulness. We have no sympathy with soulless bodies; with miserly old men of starved affections, who are too parsimonious even for the gout; who prefer bronze puttini to babies in flesh, and marble mistresses to a fond and pleasing wife! But this is their affair, not ours; if they choose thus to sacrifice to the cold manes of antiquity the sweetest and most endearing sympathies of life, the sacrifice and the loss is their own; whilst Englishmen must admit, that in England at least they form a very learned body, much given up to the prosecution of curious and prying researches. But in Italy, where all the world pretend to be antiquaries, the ignorance and incapacity of by far the larger portion of these pretenders is marvellous. No sooner has the adventurer who prints himself antiquary, begun to cheat his way on a little, then he addresses himself boldly to some venal professor of archæology too poor to refuse the bribe; who for a small consideration undertakes to decipher his inscriptions for him, to teach him his history, to furnish him with learned conjectures, and to praise his goods, which last is generally the only part of these educational acquirements which he retains, and recollects to profit by afterwards; his ignorance, in all other matters appertaining to his craft, is frequently absolute. Yet many of these men live to buy villas, to plant vineyards, and to show how much more flourishing a thing in Italy virtù is than virtue. In character, or shall we not rather say in want of character, they are all alike; and if any act of any of them bears the external semblance of honesty about it, this is predetermined by their fear of the penal "code Napoleon" and its consequences, and not by the code of moral necessity. Let your antiquarian acquaintance be ever so extensive; be you in habits of pigeon-and-hawk-like intimacy with scores of them, for years, you shall never meet one – from the noble, well-lampooned prince of St Georgio, and the courtly Count of Milan, to the poor starveling old man whose cotton pocket-handkerchief contains all his stores, with no patent of nobility to stand him in stead should he be detected in a fraud – one who will not cheat as much as, and whenever he can. As the King of Naples said of his ministers, in objecting to change them, sono ladri tutti. Woe, then, betide the simple Englishman to whom some demon has whispered to have a taste, and who thinks that he cannot better employ the time of his being abroad, than in making purchases to satisfy it. Much will he have to pay for each new apprenticeship in each new city where he sojourns for a season, while he will learn by degrees to distrust the teaching of his volunteer friends, as to what he may safely purchase, when every new acquisition is a mistake, and proves the exception to some general rule formerly taught him. It is only when they turn king's evidence and peach, that they can be safely trusted; and on these occasions he really may pick up some important hints for his future guidance; the most important of which is principiis obstare, not to begin to buy, or, if he have bought, to give over buying. How little is it generally known, by those who don't purchase, what large sums are squandered in Italy upon heaps of rubbish, palmed off and sold under the imposing names, roba antica, roba dei scavi, and the like; and how little seems it known by those who do, that of all markets for such acquisitions, the worst that an uninitiated dilettante can have to do with is the Italian! First, because it abounds more than any other in trash; and secondly, because when any thing really good comes into it, the dealers take care to put their price upon it. The much prized and paraded object has in all probability already been in England, (whence, on the death of its connoisseur possessor, and the dispersion of his effects, it has again returned to its natal soil,) and is now, it may be, to be had for twice or three times as much, as you yourself might have procured it for in Christie's auction-rooms a few months before, unless you possess an accurate taste, and an intimate knowledge of what you buy. (Not, depend upon it, to be acquired, as almost all other knowledge may now be, in six lessons.) You must know that it is quite easy to spend indefinitely large sums in the accumulation of coarse crockery, broken glass, bits of mouldings, scratched cornelians, and coins as smooth as buttons, without being able to pick one pearl from out this ancient dunghill. The peasant's ignorance, if you are also ignorant, can by no possibility be turned to your account, and, in fact, turns very much against it; for there is a prevailing tradition amongst them, that things very rare and costly, now extant in kings' palaces and great museums, have been grubbed up by the husbandman's hands; and as he cannot possibly decide what, in the amateur's mind, constitutes a prize, every fresh finding that may possibly be such, is put up and priced accordingly. Now it is a safe rule here never to buy a may be, especially when you have to pay for it as though it were a must be; and if you followed the contadino to the dealer, (who, after you, becomes his next resource,) you would find that, though the former now asks pauls for piastres, and is content to substitute baiocchi for pauls, the dealer is obdurate, and leaves his wares still upon his hands.

Some, ignorant of the ways of dealers, persuade themselves that if they go to a well-recommended shop, they may, by paying somewhat higher than they would elsewhere have done, secure themselves from all risk of imposition; and this brings us to notice that, in accordance with this well-known delusion of our countrymen, (for such we believe it to be,) the "Antiquari" are fond of dividing themselves into three classes, whereof the first is supposed to consist entirely of Galant' uomini, in which confessedly small class every one would place himself: the second of mezzo Galant' uomini, or half honest men, of whom the first division reports, that it is a well-dressed, well-spoken, and well-instituted order, ma astuto assai: and a third, which even they will tell you is their larger body, constituted of a set of ill-dressed, uneducated, ill-looking, unmannerly fellows, whom it would be unsafe to meet with an antique ring on your finger after dark, and without the city walls. Of this last class, number three, class number one is particularly desirous to impress you with a salutary awe, lest you should unfortunately become its victim. Its members, so they will tell you, have occasionally something pretty for sale; but then who, save themselves and their ally the devil, knows out of what tomb it has been plucked by night, or what conditions are annexed to its possession; and whether, after it has been purchased, the police shall not come and seize both it and its possessor? Thus one class of reputable shopkeeping rogues speaks of its peripatetic rivals, who, as they do not purchase, can afford to dispose of their things cheaper than those who have to pay both purchase and warehouse dues, making them very wrathful in consequence. The number of antiquaries, as compared with the whole population, would make a far greater statistical return than most persons are aware of, who believe the race to be confined to that half-dozen of shopkeepers who write their title over the door; these being, in fact, but a small fraction of that large community which, like the beetle called necrobios, preys both upon the living and the dead. Beside the regular shopkeeper, who sells the whole statue, and undertakes excavations on his own account, there is, in the next place, the stall-keeper, whose commerce is in fragments, and who makes his small profits upon toes and fingers, (he having received certain of the unsaleable refuse from some richer antiquary, committed to his charge on certain conditions, as the oranges that are offered in London in the streets are consigned by the wealthier to the poorer Jews to traffic in,) squats himself down in the neighbourhood of some piazza, church, or other place of public resort, where, under favour of a shower, he is enabled to dispose of his bits of rosso antico, and pavonazzo, which then exhibit all their hues, polished and shining in the rain. There is a third class who have two callings; a principal one – some petty trade, a tobacconist, a printseller, or a chemist – to which they add that of odds and ends. These they buy from the peasants on market-days; and some there are, more active than their neighbours, who make a very early start to anticipate their arrival; and many a long and weary mile will they trudge, far, far beyond the tomb of Cecilia Metella, or the Ponte Molle, before it is day, each striving to outstrip the other, and to be first to greet the simple contadini on their road Romewards from Tivoli, Frescati, Valmontone, or Veii. Alas! and notwithstanding all the pains they take, they frequently make bad purchases, and are duped by the superior cunning of other antiquaries at a distance, who have been tampering with the peasants, and have given them counterfeits to sell. Thus do antiquaries, like whitings, prey upon each other, illustrating their own proverb, Mercantia non vuol ni amici ni parenti. You become also, after a time, acquainted with a particular set of dealers, not from themselves, for they have no direct communication with the part of the town you inhabit, nor yet from the shop antiquaro, who would gladly ignore the existence of such people, but from certain fellows called mezzani or go-betweens, whose office it is to prowl about in quest of those who frequent old curiosity shops; whom they will track to their hotels, and fish out presently from couriers, or waiters, what class of things his Excellency buys. These men are perhaps the greatest rogues in Christendom; sometimes they take your side; sometimes gently hint that your most esteemed person is somewhat hard upon their friend; they wink knowingly when you say something meant to be smart, and they will expostulate earnestly, and make it quite a personal affair if their friend protests and refuses to listen to their instances in your favour. Lastly, when the purchase has been effected, they will stay to congratulate you on the bargain you are sure to have made under their auspices; and to announce to you that they have still some other ignoramuses in petto for your excellency to pigeon! Even when you don't buy, they suppress their disappointment; or, showing it, try to convince you it is on your account solely that they feel it. "You bargained," they tell you, "in style, showing at once your perfect connoisseurship and tact; and though you were aware yourself that your offers could not be entertained without a serious loss to the proprietor, (who had not such articles every day to dispose of,) and would soon find means of disposing of them, still, as the donne say, though they cannot always accept, they consider every offer a compliment." These mezzani get a per centage of eighteen per cent upon every purchase from the seller; and, if you are not aware of this, they will make a pretty per centage upon you besides. It is amusing to get access through them into many interiors that you would not else have heard of, and to have presented to you a new variety of wares, requiring new vigilance on your part every day. Thus, one man's room (he has been a soldier under Napoleon, hence his particular line of dealing) might well be styled a hero's slop-shop, out of whose stores Sir Walter Scott might have found fitting armour for every one of his heroes, from Waverley to Quentin Durward. The owner visits Thrasymene every summer, and pretends that these iron harvests of the field, which he gleans each year from near the banks of the "Stream of Blood," were sown there in the time of Hannibal, with whose name he is perfectly familiar; and should you, on questioning him, make out that he was not quite au courant as to dates, and not quite certain that every spear-head was as old as the Punic war; his rule for sale is simple, (viz.) whenever there appears to be a doubt, to give it not in your favour, but in favour of his armour. Another man, who only deals in pictures, tries your skill and knowledge in the Madonna and Saint line. This man is a collector of coins; and woe betide you if you purchase there, and can't make out the difference between a real Emperor S. C. and a pretender to the laurel! Do you know any thing of "storied urns and animated busts?" Then, and not till then, when you are sure you do, visit A – 's interior, where

– "Curias jam dimidias, humeroque minorem

Corvinum, et Galbam auriculis naroque carentem,"

you may easily find! Lastly, let no cinque-cento object of virtù tempt you to show your purse till you have taken advice from a learned friend, to whom such exhibitions are familiar. Considering the vast preliminary knowledge, both of men and things, necessary to the judicious completion of each particular purchase, you will, unless you opine, with Hudibras, that

"The pleasure is as great,
Of being cheated, as to cheat,"

be very slow in making any acquisition of price, from such a suspected source as the cabinet of the antiquary. But if you have unfortunately been made a dupe of – what remedy? That depends, if you have been led to purchase any thing under a false impression of its antiquity; and can prove this. The law itself would step in, in such a case, to repossess you of your purchase-money. If, indeed, the strong and pervading feeling amongst the other antiquari, as in an assize of crows, were not of itself sufficient to secure the condign punishment of the culprit, which consists in compelling him to refund. But this redress only extends to one particular kind of fraud, that, namely, included under the rhetorical figure called metonymy, (i. e. the substitution of one thing for another,) and does not extend beyond this; so that, though a dealer were to sell an old hatchet for one hundred pounds, provided it had the necessary patina upon it to establish its antiquity – this not constituting a case of cheating, (at least, in the antiquarian sense of the term,) but merely one of superior tact – brother-dealers might indeed condole with you in your mistake; but nobody has any right to interfere!

When you do buy, you must take nothing for granted but that you will be cheated; and get a written declaration from the dealer, that what he sells you has been paid for, as genuine, on the score of antiquity. There are, too easy purchasers, who rest satisfied with the man's word, (as if a dealer's words were aught but wind, or wind but air,) who always professes to believe that the object he has for sale is of sacrosanct antiquity, and the best of its kind, (if an onyx, for instance, not Oriental only, but Orientalissimo,) though he observes, in a sort of moralizing parenthesis, that he will not vouch for what the ignorant or the malicious may say. Here you must, we fear, range yourself on the side of malice and ignorance; non vale niente, the object is good for nothing; and if you swallow such a bait, you are a bête for your pains. Amici miei of Oxford and Cambridge, excuse the informality of self-introduction; and pray keep your caution-money till you have taken your Master-in-Arts degree abroad. If you pay it on the initiatory matriculation of a first journey, you may depend upon never getting any of it back; when on having studied anew the "art of self-defence," to protect you against another art, which you must also study, in close connexion with the "belle arti," you are become really an adept, and duly qualified for that diploma. Study antiquities in public museums; so shall you learn to appraise at their true value the gauds of dealers, which, if you have not educated your taste into a wholesome fastidiousness, by a diligent study of the real treasures of antiquity, you may chance to find most dangerously attractive – μηδἑν εναργἑς εν τἡ ψυχἡ εεχοντες παρἁδειγμα, μηδἑ δυνἁμενοι ὡσπερ γραφεἱς εις τὁ αληθἑστατον αποβλἑπουτες χἁκεἱσε δεἱ αναφεροντἑς τε και θεὡμενοι ὡς οιὁν τε, αχριβἑστατα, οὑτω δἡ και τα υπὁ τὡν καπἡλον εχἁστοτε προσεἱομενα ὁρθος διακρἱμειν ἁφ ὡν δἡ καθἁπερ οἱ θαλλὡ τινι τα πρὁβατα επαγὁμενοι τους αμνἡτους περιἁγουσιν.

Then you will hardly be induced to pay much for what you do not set much store by, merely for the sake of calling it your own. Add to this the further consideration, that in towns the Antiquari keep their best things for the resident collectors, so that you never see them; whilst all hopes of finding sound windfalls on the road you are journeying, are rendered futile, since Italy is now infested by lines of antiquarian footpads, who tramp as regularly as a well-organized police, right across its instep from sea to sea, and measure it lengthways from Milan to Otranto, sweeping up and carrying away every thing that is worth the transport. After this, you need hardly feel nervous (as some we have known were) lest, in the event of falling in with something exquisitely beautiful, the government should interfere to prevent its leaving Italy. Such an event not being in question, you need make no provision to meet it. Of the brigands and brigandage of Italy, the public has had enough; of her cheats and cheating – her virtuosi and their virtù– nobody has enlightened us. Nor, to say the truth, does the subject, at first sight, appear to admit of more than a few not very promising details of a not very pleasing picture of the Dutch school – the romance of the waylaid carriage in the mountain defile; the sudden report of fire-arms; the troop of gay-sashed cut-throats in sugar-loaf hats; the "faccia à terra!" the escort to the robber's cave; the life amongst the mountains; the ransom and the discharge – lend themselves much more readily to the author's pen, and present themselves much more forcibly to the reader's fancy, than the details into which we are about to enter. Still our subject has its interest, both in having a practical bearing, and in being new; and, as we have adopted it, we must make the best of it. Therefore, we propose to give a series of ana, rambling like our last, (as all "ana" claim a right to be,) but purporting to make some remarks, didactic and miscellaneous, on coins, gems, marbles, bronzes, terra cotta, and glass, each in due order of succession, our present lucubration confining itself to the mere introduction of our reader to the Antiquari themselves. Allusion has already been made to the very large sums wasted every year on the Continent by our countrymen in pursuit of the "antique," though it might be difficult to determine to what extent pubic credulity is thus annually imposed upon; difficult, because self-love is here at variance with self-interest, (silencing many a victim, who fears, lest if his mistakes were blabbed abroad, the world might append some more unflattering name to his own than that of dupe;) and difficult again, because there are gulls that will not be so called; and gudgeons who won't believe in a pike till he swallows them up alive! Thus, while the fraud practised is great, the stir it makes, in consequence of these things, is small; and it becomes, therefore, the more necessary to apprise amateurs, that the money laid out to learn experience may come to more than would purchase them a commission in the Guards!

"Not to admire's the simplest art we know,
To keep your fortune in its statu quo;
Who holds loose cash, nor cheques his changeling gold,
Buy what he will, is certain to be sold."

Much more had we to say in the way of advice to the untutored, but we refrain, for nobody has given us "salary, or chair;" and who, then, has given us the right to lecture "ex cathedrâ?" We throw out, therefore, no further "hints to freshmen," but proceed forthwith to describe a few of the more noted and sly of our antiquarian acquaintances in Italy. Some years back, we remember, all the English in Rome used to turn out a fox-hunting; it was considered an exploit, and so perhaps it was, to kill under the Arc of Veii, amidst the moist meadows of the Crembra; and to teach the Sabine Echo to respond from her hills to the sound of the British Tally-ho! Now, whilst the followers of the Chesterfield kennel sought their foxes without the walls, we always knew where to look for ours within; and, whatever their success, we always found; nay, what may sound somewhat paradoxical, but is true nevertheless, the more we hunted, the more we found. Like their brothers of the "brush," our Reynards were sly fellows too, and would double and dodge, and get away sometimes, just when we thought ourselves most sure of coming up with them – a few only we were fortunate enough to bag, and bring over in our sack (de nuit) to England. We purpose now to turn a few loose for the reader's diversion, apprising him, however, that they are mostly very old foxes; and so cannot run as far or as fast, or yield the same sport, that might have been expected had they been younger. The greatest age demands respect and precedency; and, as Venovali is the oldest, we will dispatch him first. So ho! Venovali!

THE AMERICANS AND THE ABORIGINES

A Tale of the Short War. Part I

I tremble for my people, when I think of the unjust acts of which they have been guilty towards the aborigines. – Jefferson.

The numerous romances of Indian life and manners to which, during the last twenty years, the busy pens of Cooper and of his disciples on both sides of the Atlantic have given birth, would perhaps make us hesitate to notice a work of a somewhat similar class, had it not, as we believe, merits and interest peculiar to itself. The readers of Blackwood who have followed us through the varied and lively scenes so graphically depicted by the author of "The Viceroy and the Aristocracy," will, we are inclined to think, turn with pleasure to a notice of another book by the same clever writer, one published previously to most of those from which we have already made extracts, and of which the time, the characters, and, partially, the scene, are different from those of any of his other works. In the "Viceroy" are found an exposition of the sufferings of the Mexican aborigines, and their half-blood descendants, under the inhuman yoke of their Spanish oppressors. Of the book now before us, one of the objects seems to be to illustrate the less sanguinary, but still, in many respects, unjust and cruel treatment received by the more northerly races of Indians at the hands of the Americans. Barbarous tribes must recede and disappear before the advance of civilisation; – doubtless it was not the intention of Providence that a few scanty hordes of savages should occupy as their hunting grounds vast tracts of land, which, by the application of industry and art, would yield sustenance to millions of men. But whether, on the other hand, the encroaching spirit of the inhabitants of the United States, that restless, rambling propensity which has driven their settlers southwards into Mexico, and westward to the Pacific, should be indulged to the extent of exterminating and dispossessing the original owners of the territory before the new occupants have real need of it, is a question admitting of more discussion than we shall here enter upon.

We have already said so much about the author now referred to, concerning the general scope of his talent, the many beauties and occasional defects of his writings, that any further preamble would be superfluous, and we will at once proceed to give specimens of his book.

Upon the road connecting the town of Coosa with Milledgeville, the capital of Georgia, and near to the spot where, at the present day, a convenient hotel invites the traveller to repose and refreshment, there stood, towards the close of the last century, beneath a projecting rock, crowned with a few red cedars and pine-trees, a rudely constructed, but roomy block-house. In front of the building, and between two massive perpendicular beams, connected by cross-bars, swung a large board, upon which was to be distinguished a grotesque figure, painted in gaudy colours, and whose diadem of feathers, tomahawk, scalping-knife, and wampum, denoted the Indian chief. Beneath this sign a row of hieroglyphical-looking characters informed the passer-by that he could here find "Entertainment for man and beast." On that side of the house, or rather hut, next to the road, was a row of wooden sheds, separated from the path by a muddy ditch, and partly filled with hay and straw. These cribs might have been supposed the habitations of the cows, had not some dirty bedding, that protruded from them, denoted them to be the sleeping apartments of those travellers whose evil star compelled them to pass the night at the sign of the Indian King. A stable and pig-sty completed the appurtenances of this backwood dwelling.

It as a stormy December night; the wind howled fiercely through the gloomy pine-forest, on the skirt of which the block-house stood, and the rapidly-succeeding crashes of the huge trees, as, with a report like thunder, the storm bore them to the ground, proclaimed the violence of one of those tornados that so frequently rage between the Blue Mountains of Tennessee and the flats of the Mississippi, sweeping with them, in their passage, trees, houses, and villages. Suddenly, in the midst of the storm, a gentle tapping was heard at the window-shutter of the block-house, to which succeeded, after a short interval, a series of heavy blows, causing the timbers of the dwelling to quiver to their foundations. Presently the door of the house was partially opened, and a man's head protruded through the aperture, as if to reconnoitre the cause of the uproar. At the same moment that this occurred, a tall, dark figure stepped quickly forward, pushed the door wide open, and, stalking into the dwelling, took his seat opposite the fireplace, followed, in deep silence and with noiseless stride, by a line of similar apparitions. When all had entered, the door was again closed, and a man of almost colossal frame approached the hearth, where some embers were still smouldering. Throwing on a supply of wood, he lit one of a heap of pine splinters that lay in the chimney corner, and then producing a tallow candle, lighted it, and placed it upon the table. By its glimmering flame, and that of the reviving fire, the interior of the hut, fully corresponding with the rough and inartificial exterior, became visible. In the corner opposite the fireplace was the bar or counter, behind whose wooden lattice stood a dozen dirty bottles, and still dirtier jugs and glasses. Below these were three kegs daubed with blue paint, and marked with the words, French Brandy, Gin, Monongahela. On one side of the room a pile of deer hides, of beaver, bear, and fox skins, denoted a frequent intercourse and active trade between the inmates of the tavern and the red men. Near the skins stood a huge tester-bed, surrounded by three small bedsteads, and a cradle, or rather trough, made out of a fragment of a hollow tree, with boards nailed across the ends. In these receptacles, to judge by the loud snoring that proceeded from them, the family of the tavern-keeper were enjoying a deep and uninterrupted repose. The walls of the apartment were of unhewn tree-trunks, varied only by broad stripes of clay filling the interstices.

On a stool in front of the fire sat the man who had first entered, a bloodstained blanket thrown over his whole person, concealing both figure and face. Behind him about twenty Indians squatted upon the clay floor, their legs crossed, their faces shrouded in their blankets, the crimson spots upon which seemed to indicate that the expedition whence they returned had been other than a peaceful one. Notwithstanding the presence of these strange guests, the master of the block-house now busied himself with putting in order the stools and benches which the intruders, upon their entrance, had unceremoniously knocked over, and this he did with as cool and sturdy an air as if his nocturnal visitors had been friends and neighbours, instead of a troop of savages on their return from some bloody foray, and who might, as likely as not, add his scalp and those of his family to the other trophies of their expedition. When he had put the last stool in its place, he sat himself down next to the Indian who appeared the chief of the band.

After the lapse of about a minute, the latter raised himself up, and allowed the blanket to slip from over his head, which now appeared bound round with a piece of calico, fringed with gouts of congealed blood. The backwoodsman cast a side glance at the Indian, but it was only a momentary one, and he allowed his gaze to revert to the fire.

"Has my white brother no tongue?" said the Indian at last, in a deep guttural tone; "or does he wait in order the better to crook it?"

"He waits for the words of the chief," replied the American drily.

"Go, call thy wife," said the Indian, in the same bass voice as before.

The tavern-keeper got up, approached the bed, and opening the curtains, spoke to his wife, who had listened, with curiosity rather than anxiety, to what passed. A few sentences were exchanged between them, and the lady made her appearance, a burly, broad-shouldered dame, with an expression upon her somewhat coarse features, indicative of her not being very easily disconcerted or alarmed. An upper petticoat of linsey-woolsey, adapted both to daily and nightly wear, made her voluminous figure look even larger and more imposing than it really was, as with a firm step and almost angry mien she stepped forward by her husband's side. But the menacing stillness of her visitors, and their bloody heads and blankets, now fully revealed by the blaze of the fire, seemed of such evil omen, that the good woman was evidently startled. Her step, at first quick and confident, began to falter, and with an involuntary shudder she approached her husband, who had resumed his seat. A minute passed in gloomy silence. Then the Indian again raised his head, but without looking up, and spoke in a harsh, severe tone.

"Listen, woman," said he, "to the words of a great warrior, whose hand is open, and who will fill his brother's wigwam with many deer skins. In return he asks but little of his sister, and that little she may easily give. Has my sister," continued he, raising his voice and glancing at the woman, "milk for a little daughter?"

The backwoodsman's wife stared at her interlocutor in great astonishment.

"Will she," continued the redskin, "give a share of her milk to a little daughter, who must else die of hunger?"

The countenance of the woman brightened as she discerned that the Indian wanted something of her, and that it was in her power to grant or refuse a favour. She took a step towards him, and impatiently awaited further explanation of his singular demand. The Indian, without deigning to look at her, opened the ample folds of his blanket, and drew forth a lovely infant, wrapped in a pelisse of costly furs. For a few seconds the woman stood in mute surprise; but curiosity to obtain a nearer view of the beautiful child, and perhaps also a feeling of compassion and motherly tenderness, speedily restored to her the use of her tongue.

"Good God!" cried she, stretching out her hands to take the infant; "what a sweet little darling; and come of good parents too, I'll be sworn. Only look at the fur, and the fine lace! Did you ever see such a thing! Where did you get the child? Poor little thing! Feed it? To be sure I will. This is no red-man's child."

The worthy lady seemed disposed to run on in this way for some time longer, had not a significant sign from her husband stopped her mouth. The chief, without vouchsafing her the smallest attention, unfastened the pelisse of grey fox skin, stripped it off, and then proceeded to divest the infant of the first of the coats in which it was enveloped, like a silkworm in its cocoon. But when, after having with some difficulty accomplished this, a third, fourth, and fifth wrapper appeared, he seemed suddenly to lose patience, and drawing his knife, he, with one cut, ripped the whole of the child's clothes from its body, and handed it over stark naked to the tavern-keeper's wife.

"Incarnate fiend!" screamed the shuddering woman, as she snatched the infant from his hands.

"Stop!" cried the Indian, his cold and imperturbable gaze fixed upon the infant's neck, from which a small medal was suspended by a gold chain. Without uttering a word, the woman stripped the chain over the child's head, threw it into the face of the savage, and hurried to her bed.

"The devil's in the woman!" muttered her husband, apparently not a little uneasy at her violence.

"The red warrior," said the Indian, with immovable calm, "will pay with beaver skins for the milk that his little daughter drinks, but he will keep what he has found, and the door must open when he comes for the child."

"That's all very well," said the tavern-keeper, to whom it suddenly appeared to occur that some farther explanation might not be altogether superfluous; "and I'll keep the child willingly enough, though, thank God, I've plenty of my own. But if the parents should come, or the white father hear of the child, what then? The red chief knows that his hand reaches far."

The Indian remained for a while silent, and then replied in a significant tone —

"The child's mother will never come. The night is very dark, the storm howls in the forest – to-morrow nothing will be seen of the red men's footsteps. It is far to the wigwam of the white father. If he hears of the child, my white brother will have told him. It he takes it, then will the red chief take the scalps of his white brother's children."

"Then take your child back again," said the backwoodsman, in a decided tone, "I'll have nought to do with it."

The Indian drew his knife, upon which fresh blood-stains were visible, and cast an ominous glance towards the bed.

"We will take care of it; no one shall hear of it!" screamed the horrorstruck woman. The Indian calmly replaced the knife in his girdle, and again spoke.

"The throats of the red men are dry," said he.

A muttering was heard behind the curtains of the bed, sounding not unlike the Christian wish, that every drop the bloodhounds swallowed might prove poison to them; the host, however, whose humanity was less vindictive than that of his wife, hastened to the bar to comply with his guest's demand. The chief drank a half-gill of whisky at a draught, and then passed the glass to his neighbour. When a sixth bottle had been emptied, he suddenly rose, threw a Spanish gold piece upon the table, opened the curtains of the bed, and hung a string of corals, which he took from his wampum girdle, round the neck of the child.