THE FIRST SETTLERS.

BY ELIZA FARNHAM.

On the northern side of a prairie, eighteen miles in extent, two groves approach within a short distance of each other from the east and west. They lie on a lofty swell of land, and are visible many miles away. The plain between these dark green promontories is smooth as the unruffled sea; and you fancy as you look upon its quiet outline, while the tree-tops toss and swell against the clear blue sky, that the smallest object would be discernible. Presently a short dark line rises against the light, and as the coach toils over swell after swell, and brings you nearer the object, it grows distinct, permanent, and bold, and fastens itself with a strange pertinacity on the eye and mind. It concentrates your wandering thoughts, and you wonder what could have led to the construction of such an object on that spot. No dwelling or other tenement is visible, and the green wall of the western grove rises apparently a full mile from it. There it stands, without proportion or symmetry, its harsh angles unrelieved by a single shrub, its silent walls brown with the storms of years. -It is a tomb! Farther back in the grove, stands a house near which its silent tenant lived and died.

I made and laid around it, some of the native hay was gathered and piled up at the corner of his cabin, and a little garden fenced and ploughed. When all these things were done, there yet remained the journey to the nearest settlement for winter goods and grains, and for the cow, which could not longer be dispensed with. When all was ready, the father and were absent many days, during each of which and his eldest son started in the emigrant waggon, the mother and her little children-protected, if danger came, only by the dog-looked anxiously out upon the great prairie, now embrowned by the frosts of autumn, and wondered when they would return. There were few travellers then in those uninhabited plains. Day after day passed, and no sign of life was visible on the plain, save the deer bounding among its crisp herbage, or the famished wolf rushing madly against the winds which bore the scent of prey. The intense sunshine which flooded the swaying sea, was now softened by the hazy atmosphere peculiar to those plains in the autumn months; the flowers were all dead, the trees disrobed, and a wild, vast desolation, which penetrated the soul of the lone woman, seemed hovering over the face of her new

home.

On the fifth day, a party of Sauk warriors, plumed Long before these lands were vacated by the and painted, entered her dwelling. Her heart beat Indians, a settler came hither from the eastward quick, and her eye glanced wildly toward her little with his family. He was roving through these beau- ones, as their swarthy figures darkened the door; but tiful gardens in search of a spot whereon to make a moment restored her self-possession. She knew his home. One morning his white-topped waggon they were not enemies, and felt secure in her very entered the southern border of this large prairie, helplessness. They had not lived much among the and, all day, was seen by the wondering Indians whites, and it requires some teaching to induce the at the grove to rise and fall slowly among the green savage to fall on a helpless person who is not his swells, coming nearer and nearer, till at nightfall foe. With the few words and signs which she had it halted on the line where this solitary tomb now acquired, she entered into conversation with them, stands. Here the travellers encamped; and one who and learned that they were on their way to give has visited the spot will not wonder that when the battle to the Kaskaskias and Peorias. Here was a patriarch had seen the next sun rise on the scene new cause of solicitude; her husband's road lay before him, he declared their journeyings ended. through the battle ground, and who could tell what A site was selected in the grove for their cabin, the savages, seeking blood, might do? or what would be logs were felled and laid up by the father and his his fate should he fall between the hostile parties! sons, and a frontier home soon sent its smoke curling Offering them such hospitality as her poor home through the overhanging boughs. Their only neigh-afforded, and praying that it might purchase the bours were the rambling Indians, who, in their exsafety of the absent, she signified her hopes and cursions from the north and south, always halted at fears, and watched their retreating footsteps with a this grove. They had no domestic animals save the boding heart. faithful cattle that had drawn them, and a dog. For many months after the cabin was built they depended on wild game and fruits for subsistence. The rifle of the father brought down abundant plies of deer and grouse, and the smaller members of the family could trap the quail, gather berries and plums, and beat the hazel and nut trees. The wife and mother wrought patiently for those Her busy hands kept a well ordered home during the day, and at night they plied the needle to the wardrobe of her little household band. It was already scanty, and materials to replace the worn-out garments were far away, and would cost what she had not to give. When one was worn beyond the resuscitating powers of her needle, its place was supplied as well as might be, by the skins which they had taken from their game.

she loved.

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Sunrise and evening twilight found the father at his labours. He had no harvest that year, but if he would reap the next, much preparation must be made before the winter came. First, the turf was broken where he proposed to plant his corn, rails were next

(1) From Life in Prairie Land. Harper & Co. New York. VO L. VI.

All day she bent her eyes to scan the plain, but nothing met her search save the forms of the retreating warriors, which grew dimmer with distance and the fading light, till at length they were wholly lost. With aching head and anxious heart, she put her little ones to bed; and when they slept she rose and looked anxiously out upon the night. Black broken clouds were driving across the heavens at a fearful rate, and the wind rushed through the naked trees, and howled around her chimney, like some evil spirit demanding sacrifice.

The only window of her cabin looks over the plain; and there she stands, gazing as if the daylight rested on it, and she hoped each moment to see the long-wished-for object heave in sight. Presently a strange light gleams on the blackened sky! What should it be? Not lightning, for it rose instead of falling, and hung longer on the sight than the electric flash. But it is gone!-now again it comes, stronger, and looks as if the bright fiery sun had lost his place, and, without any precursor, were rushing up the southern sky. Again it almost disappears; but the faint tinge is soon increased, and a broad glare bursts up which overwhelms that widowed heart. The

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her knees, and commended herself and her helpless babes to the mercy of her God; and then rose, calm and collected for the event. She had not, hitherto,

dreadful truth pierces her very heart, and makes her whole frame tremble. The prairie is on fire! Oh, God! what a conviction! She remembers now that they have talked of prairie fires, and promised them-contemplated the wonderful scene apart from the selves much pleasure in beholding them: but she never dreamed of the red demon as an enemy, and one to be encountered in this dreadful solitude.

Her heart sinks within her. There are no means to avert or escape it. The only living things about her are the children and the faithful dog. The former are sleeping quietly, and the latter sits at her feet gazing in her face with a mute sympathy that brings tears to her eyes. She does not need to look for the light now, for it has gained so that she cannot escape its glare. The wind is bearing the fire almost with its own speed across the immense savannah. She cannot calculate the distance at which she first saw it, but if it were at the extreme southern border, it must, with such a wind, reach her in a few hours, nay, even less!

dangers with which it was fraught: but now, for the first time, she was struck with its grandeur and sublimity. It was an unbroken line of flame, wide as the eye could reach, mounting, roaring, crackling, and sending up columns of black smoke, which as they rose became rarer, and rising still higher, were reilluminated so as to appear another devouring demon sweeping the heavens. Mercy and hope seemed alike cut off by its angry glare. The fiery wall shut out the world behind; except occasionally, when a blast cleft it, it opened upon a black chasm that looked like the funeral vault of nature.

Scarcely had she taken this brief survey, and noted the nearer approach of the flame, when the dog came bounding to her side, and, with the most earnest petitions, sought her attention without the door. She followed him a few steps, scarcely thinking what she did, but, finding nothing, and seeing him making

closed the door, and sat down before the window to watch the progress of the fire. In an instant he was there, pawing, whining, howling, and, by every means in his power, soliciting her attention. Before she could open the door to admit him, he bounded through the window.

But what to do? where to go? She rushes to the door. Merciful Heaven! It is all one sea of dry combustibles around her. Grass, dry grass, every-rapidly for some distant point, she turned back, where! she can find no refuge. The very tree-tops, if she could gain them, with those she is bound to save or perish with, would afford her no protection from such a sea of flame as is roaring yonder. The wind increases the elements seem to grow madder as the flame approaches, and aggravate its fury. With every blast it towers and curls, and then, as if enraged at its own impotence, sinks a moment sul-all be consumed-there is no hope now!" He stood lenly, to gather strength for a fresh effort.

There is a large creek about four miles away; and on this the lone woman hangs her last faint hope. The wind will not befriend her, and she can only hope that the waters may arrest the flame. Hapless woman! she little knew the strength of the devastating demon that was let loose that night! A slender thread of water to separate her from such a surging sea of flame! But if it did not protect her, what then? If the last extremity came, what should she do? She could have but few moments to deliberate, after the dreadful foe crossed this line. Bewildered, almost stupified, by the terrors of her condition, she had not waked her children. She had contemplated their dreadful fate alone, almost in silence, and with little action, after she opened the door, and was overpowered by the conviction that to leave the house was even more certain death than to remain.

Now, when the time grew short, and the hot breath of her relentless foe rushed fiercely around her, she addressed herself rapidly to the care of her little ones; she woke them with much difficulty, and with much more brought them to comprehend the danger that awaited them. One lively boy enjoyed the spectacle, and clapped his hands, and almost maddened his mother by rushing out to get a fairer view of the wonderful scene. But where was the dog?-the noble dog who was her only intelligent friend in this fearful time? Her quick mind had counted on his protection in case she should escape and were shelterless. But where was he? She stepped to the door; the light was now strong and revealed distinctly every object. He was nowhere to be seen! She made the woods ring with his name, and presently a low supplicating bark was borne to her ears on the hot wind.

The fire had crossed the creek, and was tearing its way, like an infuriated demon, up the plain. A few minutes must decide her fate; she fell on

"Merciful God! what have you done! we shall

at her feet; the strong intelligence of his face fascinated her eye in spite of the danger. What could he mean? In an instant the sagacity of his instinct flashed upon her. To the ploughed field! Yes, there was hope, and there alone. She seized the two younger children in one arm, and almost lifting the other by her hand, she fled along the trodden path, the delighted dog going before, and manifesting his joy by every sign in his power. They gain the fence-the fire is at their heels, it almost blisters their unprotected faces! One or two more leaps, and the herbless ground is gained. The fire has nothing now to feed on, and almost faint with the sudden and certain safety, the exhausted mother drops on the ground among her helpless infants.

In a few

"Merciful Saviour, what an escape!" minutes the flames are besieging the house; the logs covered with dry bark are but a morsel in their fierce jaws; the hay-stack takes fire, and communicates to the rest of the cabin, and while the great volume of the fire sweeps among the trees and over the plain, it leaves the heavier materials to be consumed more slowly. Long did the light of the burning home, therefore, blight the eye of the lone woman after the "prairie fire" had done its worst around her and gone, bearing ruin and devastation to the northern plains and groves. Worn out by the terrors of the night, she sank into the semblance of sleep on the naked earth, among her babes, with her faithful pretector crouched at her feet.

She woke in the morning to the dread reality, which had been briefly forgotten, but which now broke with stunning force upon her senses. Her children were chilled and hungry. The spot where late their pleasant hearthside shone was a heap of mouldering brands and blackened ashes, with which the morning winds were toying in merry pastime. There was neither food nor shelter! and when she rose to her feet and looked out upon the plain, its strange appearance startled her. It seemed more

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boundless than ever, and the blackness of desolation | hand, and turn his intelligent eyes towards hers with brooded over it. It was clean shorn of every blade an expression of sympathy and confidence that of vegetation, and appeared, within the tast few cheered her solitary vigil more than she could tell. hours, to have been blighted with a curse from which the smiles of heaven could scarcely redeem it.

With faltering steps the unhappy woman gathered her little ones, and prepared to leave their cheerless bed. But whither should they go? There was no house within many miles. Beside her own little roof she had not seen another since they left the last set-dering ends of the logs tumbled into a new position, tlement. To seek shelter or bread, therefore, from others was impossible. Her only resource was to search the wasted wood and plain for roots or nuts, or whatever might be left to support life, till her husband's return. The fire of her cabin would warm her shivering babes for one or two days at least, and if help came not then, she must trust herself to the mercies of a journey over the bleak desert.

Bending her steps, therefore, towards the smouldering ruins, she soothed and warmed her children, and set out with the generous dog to search the grove for food. It was a desperate pilgrimage: most of the nuts and fruits in the vicinity of the house, had been gathered and deposited in the loft for winter use; and of those that were left upon the ground, few had escaped the consuming flames of the previous night. Occasionally, she found one sheltered by a decayed log or a heavy clump of grass, which the fire in its haste had not stopped to devour. But they were rare, and she had three mouths to feed beside her own! A scanty meal was, however, obtained, and she returned to the fire. The warmth relieved their sufferings more effectually than the coarse morsel they had eaten. The little ones wondered where the house was, but rejoiced in the great pile of burning logs, and after a little time, the mother had the happiness of seeing them forget their hunger in some merry games.

Long and intensely this day did her eyes dwell on the wide, black plain! She had no need to look so earnestly, for the most careless glance would have revealed the white cover of the waggon if it had been moving over the dark surface. Noon passed, and brought no signal of mercy. She could see the brown deer leaping timidly over the scorched waste, and the grouse wheeling his short, swift flight from place to place; but this was all. Another night of dreadful solitude, exposed to cold and hunger, and to the starved wolf! shelterless, weaponless-the dog their only defence.

During the day she had found a few of the groundnuts, which grew quite abundantly in the edge of the grove; with these she fed her little ones; and parting with nearly all her clothing, wrapped them in the scant covering; and with pleasant words, while her heart was bursting, soothed them to sleep, and laid them on the charred turf to the windward of the smoking pile, while, with her noble dog, she sat down to watch their slumbers.

At intervals, for several hours, the winds bore to her aching ears the short, querulous barking of the small prairie wolf, and once or twice her very blood curdled when the shrill, dismal howl, by which the large grey wolf summons his neighbours for an attack, resounded over the bleak waste! The night was utterly black. Beyond the little circle, faintly lighted by the wasting embers, nothing could be discerned. Her eyes would not warn her of an enemy within three yards; and as often as she peered into the darkness at every new sound, the faithful dog would nestle to her side and lick her

The cold winds howled around her thinly clad frame, and chilled it to the core. The noises one by one died away, and, spite of the horrors of her condition, a drowsiness stole over her which she could scarcely resist. Her eyelids drooped, and her shivering body swayed slightly to and fro, when the smouland sent upward a volume of shining, crackling sparks, which roused her sinking energies and braced her for another hour's watching. At last the darkness became profoundly silent! Save the steady pressure of the wind, not a sound was heard. The nocturnal wanderers seemed to have withdrawn to their haunts, and left nature to the undisputed reign of night. Chilled, and faint with fatigue and fasting, the lonely watcher could no longer preserve her wakefulness; she curled her shivering form close to the sleeping babes, and left the vigil to the faithful dog.

It was stupor rather than sleep that locked her faculties till the cry for food recalled them. The fire was diminishing; the sun was up, but he looked coldly through a mass of leaden vapour that was crowding up the south-eastern sky. The whole heavens were curtained with the still, sullen mass which threatened every moment to descend in rain. A few hours before, she had thought her condition could' scarcely be aggravated. But the impending storm was little less to be dreaded, in their feeble state, than the terrible foe which had exposed them to it. Her limbs were stiff and full of pain; her brain reeled, and her sight became dim, as she rose to her feet and prepared to search the grove once more for something to sustain life in her hungry children.

Her own desire for food was gone; she would have loathed the most tempting viands. But when the little ones hung upon her garments and begged for bread, she summoned her fainting limbs to one more effort; and, taking a direction which had not been tried before, she found, after a long and painful search, a few stalks of the ground-nut, which her feeble hands with difficulty removed from their firm hold upon the soil. The roots of these afforded a morsel wherewith to still the cries that pierced her heart. And when there was no farther hope, and her limbs tottered beneath her, and strange racking pains wrung her worn body, she hastened back to the spot which still seemed home, though nought of home was there, and felt, if her hour were come, it was better to lie down and perish by those consecrated ashes, than in the cheerless wood.

A drizzling rain was falling when she reached the spot, and threatened to increase. It would be impossible to preserve the fire long; but pushing the brands together, she gathered her trembling little ones about her knees, and, between her periods of agony, sought to impress their memories with the terrible events that had befallen them. She endeavoured to make the eldest boy comprehend that he might be the only narrator whom his father would find, should he ever return; and left many tender messages for him and for her first-born. With pallid, tearful face he promised to do as she desired; but urged her to tell him where she would be when his father came, and whether his little brothers were going with her, to leave him all alone.

The rain increased, and their drenched garments gave the chilling blast redoubled power. The em

bers hissed and blackened, and soon refused to warm the shaking group. Like the pangs of death grew the mother's agony!-as certain and relentless! And there, beside the reeking ruins of her home, the black earth beneath, and the pitiless storm above-tions were completed, and the dead lowered on the there, alone, her only attendants the helpless children and the dog, who sat at her head, and seemed almost to weep over her writhing form, the hapless woman gave birth to a little being whose eyes never opened to the desolation of its natal hour!

corpse, and hewn a rough coffin to receive her and her untimely babe, she was deposited. The grave was a rude hollow, scooped with sticks and the hands of the widowed husband and his sons. The preparaafternoon of the second day. At midnight a troop of famished wolves attacked the holy spot, and but for the rifle of the husband, would have torn its sacred contents from their rude repose. The next day he felled the nearest trees, and laid them in the form of a vault on the spot. And this it is which greets the traveller's eye so many miles away on the untenanted prairie !

One cabin has sprung up in its midst, on the bank of the stream. But it is forsaken and dilapidated. Its door is gone, and the rough planks which made the floor have been used as fuel by emigrants who have encamped near it. Its small cellar yawns dismally in the face of the curious traveller who looks within.

Long did the mother lie unconscious alike of the terror-stricken cries of the children and the moaning caresses of her dumb friend. The day was far advanced when her eyes opened on the dreadful scene. The grove has since retired and left the tomb The cold rain was pouring steadily down, and twi-alone-a bold and solitary mark on the high line of light seemed to her faint eyes to be creeping over the horizon. The plain below is still unchanged. It the earth. A pleasant sound was ringing in her is the same rich, green expanse in summer; the ears, but either it was a dream, or its import had same bleak, howling waste in winter. It is now faded from her mind before it was fully grasped. | skirted with farms under the edge of the woodlands. She made an effort to rise, but fell senseless. Once again her eyes opened, and this time it was no illusion. The eldest of her little watchers was shouting in her ear, "Mother, I see father's waggon!" and there indeed it was, close at hand before his untrained eye had discovered it. All day it had been toiling across the black prairie! The rain had softened the turf, and the wheels sank without cutting it; so that the last few miles had been inconceivably tedious. The mourning garb of the plain had struck the hearts of both father and son with indescribable terror. The former would have left his slow team and flown across it, but his son had charge of the cow, and this was impossible. More alarmed and excited as he advanced, he was still obliged to restrain his intense feelings, and accommodate his progress to the slow motion of the tired cattle. Night drew on before the desolation of his home was revealed to him.

When within about a mile, he should have discovered the house, but all was a level waste! Unable longer to endure the torture, he sprang forward, leaving the animals to follow as they chose. He flew, he shouted, and the dog bounded to meet the wellknown voice. When the boy saw the waggon, the father had just left it, so that even as he repeated the joyful tidings, the stricken man stood over them, half-stupified by the effort to comprehend the nature and extent of his calamities.

A group of perishing children, an infant corpse, a dying wife! and all, all gone, wherewith to minister even the decent ceremonies of such a period. Oh, how bitterly his heart cursed the day when he trusted the treacherous beauty that invited him there! He raised the dying woman in his arms; the seal was on her glazing eye, and the faint fluttering at her wrist foretold the last and worst that could befall him! Slowly, word by word, she told her agonizing tale. He threw his garments over her, and wiped the rain-drops from her face, and drew her to his heart. But the cold dew returned, and told that storm or shelter would be soon the same to her! He prayed her forgiveness, and with wild, incoherent words, accused himself of her cruel murder. She vindicated him from these accusations with all her little strength, and with many messages for her absent son, and many prayers for her dear children and their father, she resigned her breath, just as the last light was fading from the western sky.

She had begged that her tomb might be made on the site of the burned cabin. And there, when he had watched two days and nights by her unsheltered

TWO HOURS IN A PRISON.

BY AGNES STRICKLAND.

(The Historian of the Queens of England.) We have duties to the age we live in ; and it behoves those who labour in the cause of truth not to confine their researches to ancient tomes or mouldering documents, records of the immutable PAST, but to walk occasionally abroad among their fellow-creatures, and to note the distinctive features of that important PRESENT, on which depends the happiness or misery of the millions who are passing onward with us to the boundless ocean of eternity. The facts which our own eyes have witnessed, do they not belong to the history of our times, a most important portion of it, the domestic statistics of the people? When future writers shall be describing our PRESENT as their PAST, will they not search for these things, these facts of every-day occurrence, as carefully as we have sought for those which gave characteristic evidences of the illustrious dead of centuries gone by?

Our sympathies should not be exclusively devoted to the calamities of royalty; and I venture to believe that many of the gentle readers who have delighted to enter with me into the palaces of the Queens of England, will follow me with no less interest into the cottage of the English peasant, or the gloomy recesses of the prison-house.

stern realities, is from my pencilled notes of The following transcript of a page of life's two hours spent in one of those desecrated abodes of royalty which modern utilitarianism has converted into a county jail.