The noble courser broke away. And bounded o'er the plain? The desert echoed to his tread, As high he toss'd his graceful head, And shook his flowing name.
King of the Western deserts! Thou Art still untam'd and free! Ne'er shall that crest he forced to bow Beneath the yoke of drudgery low: But still in freedom shalt thou roam The boundless fields that form thy home Thy native Prairie!' ANON.
The camp of the Indian hunters looked cheerful and picturesque, as Oriana and Mailah approached it one evening on their return from a ramble in the forest, where they had been to seek the wild fruits that now abounded there, and paused at the skirt of the wood, to admire the scene before them. The proposed hunting-ground had been reached the preceding day, and already the temporary huts were completed, and the tents of the Sachem pitched beneath a grove of lofty oaks and walnuts, free from underwood, and on the border of a clear and rippling stream. The Nausett and Pequodee hunters had purchased a considerable number of horses from their Cree friends; and, therefore, the journey from Chingook's village to the prairie, in which the encampment now stood, had been performed with much ease and expedition; and the hardy animals were so little fatigued by their march through the forest, that several of the younger Indians had mounted again the morning after their arrival, and gone off on a reconnoitering expedition, to discover what prospect there was of finding much game in that neighborhood.
Henrich--proud and happy in the possession of a spirited horse, with which Tisquantum had presented him--insisted on being one of the party; end he was accompanied, also, by Jyanough, who had left his native village, now rendered sad and gloomy in his eyes, to follow his white friend, and share his society at least for a time. This arrangement gave Henrich the greatest satisfaction for the young Cree was the only Indian of his own sex in whom he had been able to find a companion, or who had peculiarly attached himself to the stranger: and the more he saw of Jyanough the more he found in him to win his esteem and friendship.
Oriana and Mailah seated themselves on the luxuriant grass to rest; and the young Indian mother removed her child from the strange cradle in which she always carried it, and laid it on her knees; and then, after gazing at it for a few moments, she began to sing a wild, sweet song, to hush it to sleep. In a soft, monotonous cadence, she sang the sad story of its little life--its birth--its captivity--and the death of its murdered father, whom she exhorted it to imitate, and live to equal in courage and in skill. And thus she sang: