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'Unconquered man, by Science guided far, Shall boldly measure every brilliant star, Till all these orbs in glory so replete Shall roll in silent homage at his feet. Here is a triumph for thy honored brow: Is man encircled with the laurel now?

We spoke of distant countries In regions strange and fair, And of the wondrous beings

And curious customs there;

Of perfumed lamps on the Ganges
Which are launched in the twilight hour,

This conquest, purchased by no bloody And the dark and silent Brahmins,

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Who worship the lotus-flower;

Of the wretched dwarfs of Lapland

Broad-headed, wide-mouthed and smallWho crouch round their oil-fires, cooking, And chatter and scream and bawl.

And the maidens earnestly listened

Till at last we spoke no more;
The ship like a shadow had vanished,
And darkness fell deep on the shore.

Translation of CHARLES G. LELAND.

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THE TEAR.

HERE is a gem—a hallowed Of more intrinsic worth Than ever decked the diadem

Of potentate on earth: It is a gem of purer ray

Than India's mines possess, Beams brightly in affliction's day, And sparkles in distress.

gem

This gem is seen in woman's eye,
And speaks a language dear,
When the last lingering, kind "Good-bye"
Just falters on the ear-

When heart to heart responsive beats

And hand with hand is pressed, When cheek with cheek as warmly meets, And breast as warm with breast.

ROBERT S. COFFIN.

THE FLYING HEAD.

A LEGEND OF SACONDAGA LAKE.

"The great God hath sent us signs in the sky; we have heard uncommon noise in the heavens, and have seen heads fall down upon the earth!"-Speech of Tahayadoris, a Mohawk sachem, at Albany, October 25, 1689.

T

It hath telltale tongues-this casing air

That walls us in-and their wandering breath
Will whisper the horror everywhere

That clings to that ruthless deed of death,
And a vengeful eye from the gory tide
Will

open to blast the parricide.

a refuge in that mountain-region. The evil shapes that were formerly so troublesome to the red hunter seem in these later days to have become less restless at his presence, and, whether it be that the day of their power has gone by or that their vindictiveness has relented at witnessing the fate which seems to be universally overtaking the people whom they once delighted to persecute, certain it is that the few Indians who now find their way to this part of the country are never molested.

HE country about the head-wa- | grounds in quest of the game that still finds ters of the great Mohegan as the Hudson is sometimes called—though abounding in game and fish, was never, in the recollection of the oldest Indians living, nor in that of their fathers' fathers, the permanent residence of any one tribe. From the black mountain-tarns where the eastern fork takes its rise to the silver strand of Lake Pleasant, through which the western branch makes its way after rising in Sacondaga Lake, the wilderness that intervenes and all the mountains round about the fountain-heads of the great river have from time immemorial been infested by a class of beings with whom no good man would ever wish to come in contact. The young men of the Mohawk have, indeed, often traversed it when in years gone by they went on the warpath after the hostile tribes of the North, and the scattered and wandering remnants of their people, with an occasional hunting-party from the degenerate bands that survive at St. Regis, will yet occasionally be tempted over these haunted

The Flying Head, which is supposed to have first driven the original possessors of these hunting-grounds, whosoever they were, from their homes, and which, as long as tradition runneth back, in the old day before the whites came hither, guarded them from the occupancy of every neighboring tribe has not been seen for many years by any credible witness, though there are those who insist that it has more than once appeared to them, hovering, as their fathers used to describe it, over the lake in which it first had its birth. The existence of this fearful monster, however, has never been disputed. Rude representations of it are still occasion

ally met with in the crude designs of those | Ontario and all move away to a new home degenerate aborigines who earn a scant sub- beyond its broad waters. The wild rice, sistence by making birchen baskets and or- of which some had been brought into their namented pouches for such travellers as are country by a runner from a distant nation, curious in their manufacture of wampum and would, they thought, support them in their porcupine-quills, and the origin and history perilous voyage along the shores of the great of the Flying Head survive, while even the water where it grows in such profusion, and name of the tribe whose crimes first called they believed that, once safely beyond the it into existence has passed away for ever. lake, it would be easy enough to find a new It was a season of great severity with home abounding in game upon those flowery that forgotten people whose council-fires plains which, as they had heard, lay like one were lighted on the mountain-promontory immense garden beyond the chain of inland that divides Sacondaga from the sister-lake seas. into which it discharges itself. A long and severe winter with but little snow had killed the herbage at its roots, and the moose and deer had trooped off to the more luxuriant pastures along the Mohawk, whither the hunters of the hills dared not follow them. The fishing, too, failed, and the famine became so devouring among the mountains. that whole families who had no hunters to provide for them perished outright. The young men would no longer throw the slender product of the chase into the common stock, and the women and children had to maintain life as well as they could upon the roots and berries the woods afforded them.

The sufferings of the tribe became at length so galling that the young and enterprising began to talk of migrating from the ancient seat of their people, and, as it was impossible, surrounded as they were by hostile tribes, merely to shift their hunting-grounds for a season and return to them at some more auspicious period, it was proposed that if they could effect a secret march to the great lake off to the west of them they should launch their canoes upon

The old men of the tribe were indignant at the bare suggestion of leaving the bright streams and sheltered valleys amid which their springtime of life had passed so happily. They doubted the existence of the garden-regions of which their children spoke, and they thought that if there were indeed such a country it was madness to attempt to reach it in the way proposed. They said, too, that the famine was a scourge which the Master of Life inflicted upon his people for their crimes, that if its pains were endured with the constancy and firmness that became warriors the visitation would soon pass away, but that those who fled from it would only war with their destiny, and that chastisement would follow them, in some shape, wheresoever they might flee. Finally, they added that they would rather perish by inches on their native hills-they would rather die that moment than leave them for ever to revel in plenty upon stranger-plains.

"Be it so! They have spoken!" exclaimed a fierce and insolent youth, springing to his feet and casting a furious glance around the council as the aged chief who had thus addressed it resumed his seat. "Be the

dotard's words their own, my brothers; let | resignation to the decrees of Fate which an Indian warrior ever exhibits when death is near; and each of the seven old men that perished thus barbarously drew his wolf-skin mantle around his shoulders and nodded his head, as if inviting the death-blow that followed.

us.

them die for the crimes they have even now acknowledged. We know of none; our unsullied summers have nothing to blush for. It is they that have drawn this curse upon our people; it is for them that our vitals are consuming with anguish, while our strength wastes away in the search of sustenance we cannot find, or which, when found, we are compelled to share with those for whose misdeeds the Great Spirit hath placed it far from They have spoken: let them die. Let them die if we are to remain to appease the angry spirit, and the food that now keeps life lingering in their shrivelled and useless carcases may then nerve the limbs of our young hunters or keep our children from perishing. Let them die if we are to move hence, for their presence will but bring a curse upon our path; their worn-out frames will give way upon the march, and the raven that hovers over their corses will guide our enemies to the spot and scent them like wolves upon our trail. Let them die, my brothers, and because they are still our tribesmen let us give them the death of warriors, and that before we leave this ground;" and with these words the young barbarian, pealing forth a ferocious whoop, buried his tomahawk in the head of the old man nearest to him.

The infernal yell was echoed on every side; a dozen flint hatchets were instantly raised by as many remorseless arms, and the massacre was wrought before one of those thus horribly sacrificed could interpose a plea of mercy. But for mercy they would not have pleaded had opportunity been afforded them, for even in the moment that intervened between the cruel sentence and its execution they managed to show that stern

The parricidal deed was done, and it now became a question how to dispose of the remains of those whose lamp of life while twinkling in the socket had been thus fearfully quenched for ever. The act, though said to have been of not unfrequent occurrence among certain Indian tribes at similar exigences, was one utterly abhorrent to the nature of most of our aborigines, who from their earliest years are taught the deepest veneration for the aged. In the present instance, likewise, it had been so outrageous a perversion of their customary views of duty among this simple people that it was thought but proper to dispense with their wonted mode of sepulture and dispose of the victims of famine and fanaticism in some peculiar manner. They wished in some way to sanctify the deed by offering up the bodies of the slaughtered to the Master of Life, and that without dishonoring the dead. It was, therefore, agreed to decapitate the bodies and burn them; and, as the nobler part could not, when thus dissevered, be buried with the usual forms, it was determined to sink the heads together to the bottom of the lake.

The soulless trunks were accordingly consumed and the ashes scattered to the winds. The heads were then deposited singly in separate canoes, which were pulled off in a kind of procession from the shore. The young chief who had suggested the bloody

scene of the sacrifice rowed in advance, in | watchers thought that the spreading scalp— order to designate the spot where they were for such now all agreed it was—had raised to disburden themselves of their gory freight. itself from the water and become rounded at Resting then upon his oars, he received each the top, as if there were a head beneath it. head in succession from his companions and Some thought, too, that they could discover proceeded to tie them together by their scalp- a pair of hideous eyes glaring beneath the locks, in order to sink the whole, with a huge dripping locks. They looked on the sixth, stone, to the bottom. But the vengeance of and there indeed was a monstrous head floatthe Master of Life overtook the wretch be- ing upon the surface, as if anchored to the fore his horrid office was accomplished, for spot, around which the water, notwithstandno sooner did he receive the last head into ing a blast which swept the lake, was calm his canoe than it began to sink; his feet be- and motionless as ever. came entangled in the hideous chain he had been knotting together, and before his horrorstricken companions could come to his rescue he was dragged, shrieking, to the bottom. The others waited not to see the water settle over him, but pulled with their whole strength for the shore.

The morning dawned calmly upon that unhallowed water, which seemed at first to show no traces of the deed it had witnessed the night before. But gradually, as the sun rose up higher, a few gory bubbles appeared to float over one smooth and turbid spot which the breeze never crisped into a ripple. The parricides sat on the bank watching it all the day, but sluggish as at first that sullen blot upon the fresh blue surface still remained. Another day passed over their heads, and the thick stain was yet there. On the third day the floating slime took a greener hue, as if colored by the festering mass beneath, but coarse fibres of darker dye marbled its surface; and on the fourth day these began to tremble along the water like weeds growing from the bottom or the long tresses of a woman's scalp floating in a pool when no wind disturbs it. The fifth morning came, and the conscience-stricken

Those bad Indians ther wished to fly, but the doomed parricides had not now the courage to encounter the warlike bands through which they must make their way in fleeing from their native valley. from their native valley. They thought, too, that, as nothing about the head except the eyes had motion, it could not harm them, resting quietly, as it did, upon the bosom of the waters. And, though it was dreadful to have that hideous gaze fixed for ever upon their dwellings, yet they thought that if the Master of Life meant this as an expiation for their frenzied deed they would strive to live on beneath those unearthly glances without shrinking or complaint.

But a strange alteration had taken place in the floating head on the morning of the seventh day. A pair of broad wings, ribbed like those of a bat and with claws appended to each tendon, had grown out during the night, and, buoyed up by these, it seemed to be now resting on the water. The water itself appeared to ripple more briskly near it, as if joyous that it was about to be relieved of its unnatural burden, but still for hours the head maintained its first position. At last the wind began to rise, and, driving through the trough of the waves, beneath

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