All this was very mysterious and incomprehensible to me; which my countenance showing, the gentleman-for indeed he was a man both of good appearance and manners —exclaimed, “I beg your pardon: I believe I have been acting like a fool, and talking like one. But the appearance of a human being sitting on that rock, unmanned me: I thought it was myself, and-and-. In short, sir, I scarce know what I am saying. You seem amazed at my trepidation. Yet I can tell you of an adventure on that rock, which will excuse my weakness. Yes-that is, if you will but walk with me to some secure place to the island; for, I freely admit, my thoughts are here too much disordered."

My curiosity being raised, and somewhat of an interest excited in the stranger, whose years, for he was in the prime of life, his tall and robust frame, and manly countenance, seemed inconsistent with the weakness of fear, I readily attended him to the island. His agitation decreased, as we approached it; and, by and by, when we had plunged amid its sweet bowers, walking towards its upper borders, whither he begged me to accompany him, it vanished so entirely, that he was able like myself, to note and admire the number

less beauties, which make almost an elysium of this fairy island.

Was there ever, indeed, a spot so lovely as Goat Island? Couched on the breast of the fall, surrounded by the mighty floods, that go rushing by with the velocity, and ten times the power and fury, of the wind-a very hurricane of waters; lashed, beaten, worried, perpetually devoured by them; it lies amid the roar and convulsion, its little islets around it, green, lovely, and peaceful, an Eden on the face of chaos. Hid in its groves of becch and maple, of larch and hemlock, oak, linden and tuliptree; in its peeping glades, embowered with vines and ivies, and towering sumachs that cluster rich and red as Persian roses all around; the raspberry hanging from the bush, the strawberry and the bluebell glimmering together on the ground; the bee and the butterfly, the grasshopper and the humming-bird pursuing their pretty tasks all around; the sparrow and the mocking bird singing aloft; the dove cooing, the woodpecker tapping, in the shade; you might here dream away an anchoritish existence, scarce conscious of the proximity of the cataract, whose voice comes to your ear, a softened murmur, that seems only the hum of other birds and insects

a little further off. A step brings you to its borders, and here you look over a wall of torrent to the world, from which you are yet sundered far enough to satisfy even the complaining Timon. Here you may muse and moralize over "man, that quintessence of dust," and yet indulge the yearning to be near him of which no misanthrope can wholly divest himself; here, in your island, your

desert inaccessible,

Under the shade of melancholy boughs,

you may rail at the monster, without being exasperated by, or entirely banished from, his presence.

Following my new friend through the lovely walks of the island, and still keeping on its western borders, we reached a charming nook, where a cluster of several rocky and wooded islets was separated from Goat Island only by a narrow channel, through which, however, the current flowed with great tumult and violence. The trunk of a spruce tree, half submerged by the flood, in which it shook with perpetual tremor, offered a passage to the nearer islet to such as were inclined to avail themselves of it. But that

was not I; I liked not the appearance of the aguish log, over which, every now and then, the torrent made a complete breach, leaping into the air like a gallant and impatient hunter taking a five-barred gate, and then plunging down again to pursue its impetuous course. Nor was my companion a whit more disposed to the adventure than myself. On the contrary, he gazed upon the foamy bridge with some share of the agitation he had previously displayed. From this, however, he soon recovered, and even laughed at his weakness; after which, sitting down with me at the roots of an ancient tree, the roaring channel at our feet, he related the incident of adventure the mere allusion to which had aroused my curiosity. He was, he gave me to understand a citizen of the West of Illinois; but born in the Empire State, which he was now revisiting with no other object than to renew a brief acquaintance with the scenes of his youth. But it is proper he should speak his story in his

own words.

A NIGHT

ON THE

TERRAPIN

ROCKS.

CHAPTER II.

"My earliest breath was drawn in the great metropolis; from which, I thank heaven, I have escaped to become a freeman of the prairies. The slavery of a city life, not to speak of the more intolerable bondage of trade, I early learned to detest; and I as early made an effort to throw off my chains, and turn savage. You know what the philosopher-I believe it is Humboldt-says: 'It is with the beginning of civilization as with its decline: man appears to repent of the restraint which he has imposed on himself by entering into society; and he seeks the solitude, and loves it, because it restores him to his former freedom." I was beginning to be