was closed-a second time brought home to mewhich prompted my frenzied cry. Every sense seemed to have tenfold acuteness, yet not one to act in unison with another. I shrieked again and again

and even as the rest of the iron coffin around him, closed, with not a rivet-hole to let God's light and air in-why-why-he'd 'a swounded right down on the spot, as I did, and I ain't ashamed to own it to no white-man."

The big drops actually stood upon the poor fellow's brow, as he now paused for a moment in the recital of his terrible story. He passed his hand over his rough features, and resumed it with less agitation of manner.

"How long I may have remained there senseless I don't know. The doctors have since told me it must have been a sort of fit-more like an apoplexy than a swoon, for the attack finally passed off in sleep. Yes, I slept; I know that, for I dreameddreamed a heap o' things afore I awoke,—there is but one dream, however, that I have ever been able to recall distinctly, and that must have come on shortly before I recovered my consciousness. My resting-place through the night had been, as I have told you, at the far end of the boiler. Well, I now dreamed that the manhole was still open-and, what seems curious, rather than laughable, if you take it in connection with other things, I fancied that my legs had been so stretched in the long walk I had taken the evening before, that they now reached the whole length of the boiler, and extended through the opening.

"At first, (in my dreaming reflections,) it was a comfortable thought, that no one could now shut up the manhole without awakening me. But soon it seemed as if my feet, which were on the outside, were becoming drenched in the storm which had originally driven me to seek this shelter. I felt the chilling rain upon my extremities. They grew colder and colder, and their numbness gradually extended upward to other parts of my body. It seemed, however, that it was only the under side of my person that was thus strangely visited. I laid upon my back, and it must have been a species of nightmare that afflicted me, for I knew at last that I was dreaming, yet felt it impossible to rouse myself. A violent fit of coughing restored, at last, my powers of volition. The water, which had been slowly rising around me, had rushed into my mouth; I awoke to hear the rapid strokes of the pump which was driving it into the boiler!

"My whole condition-no-not all of it—not yet-my present condition flashed with new horror upon me. But I did not again swoon. The choking sensation which had made me faint, when I first discovered how I was entombed, gave way to a livelier, though less overpowering emotion. I shrieked even as I started from my slumber. The previous discovery of the closed aperture, with the instant oblivion that followed, seemed only a part of my dream, and I threw my arms about and looked eagerly for the opening by which I had entered the horrid place-yes, looked for it, and felt for it, though it was the terrible conviction that it

hollow chamber with my cries, till its iron walls seemed to tingle around me. The dull strokes of the accursed pump seemed only to mock at, while they deadened my screams.

"At last I gave myself up. It is the struggle against our fate which frenzies the mind. We cease to fear when we cease to hope. I gave myself up, and then I grew calm!

"I was resigned to die-resigned even to my mode of death. It was not, I thought, so very new after all, as to awaken unwonted horror in a man. Thousands have been sunk to the bottom of the ocean shut up in the holds of vessels-beating themselves against the battened hatches-dragged down from the upper world shrieking, not for life, but for death only beneath the eye and amid the breath of heaven. Thousands have endured that appalling kind of suffocation. I would die only as many a better man had died before me. I could meet such a death. I said so-I thought so-I felt so-felt so, I mean, for a minute-or more; ten minutes it may have been-or but an instant of time. I know not-nor does it matter if I could compute it. There was a time, then, when I was resigned to my fate. But, good God! was I resigned to it in the shape in which next it came to appal? Stranger, I felt that water growing hot about my limbs, though it was yet mid-leg deep. I felt it, and, in the same moment, heard the roar of the furnace that was to turn it into steam before it could get deep enough to drown one!

"You shudder,-It was hideous. But did I shrink and shrivel, and crumble down upon that iron floor, and lose my senses in that horrid agony of fear?-No!-though my brain swam and the life-blood that curdled at my heart seemed about to stagnate there for ever, still I knew! I was too hoarse-too hopeless, from my previous efforts, to cry out more. But I struck-feebly at first, and then strongly-frantically with my clenched fist against the sides of the boiler. There were people moving near who must hear my blows! Could not I hear the grating of chains, the shuffling of feet, the very rustle of a rope-hear them all, within a few inches of me? I did-but the gurgling water that was growing hotter and hotter around my extremities, made more noise within the steaming chaldron, than did my frenzied blows against its sides.

"Latterly I had hardly changed my position, but now the growing heat of the water made me plash to and fro; lifting myself wholly out of it was impossible, but I could not remain quiet. I stumbled upon something-it was a mallet!-a chance tool the smith had left there by accident. With what wild joy did I seize it-with what eager confidence did I now deal my first blows with it against the walls of my prison! But scarce had I intermitted them for a moment when I heard the clang of the iron door as the fireman flung it wide to feed the flames that were to torture me. My knocking was

unheard, though I could hear him toss the sticks into the furnace beneath me, and drive to the door when his infernal oven was fully crammed.

"Had I yet a hope? I had, but it rose in my mind side by side with the fear that I might now become the agent of preparing myself a more frightful death-Yes! when I thought of that furnace with its fresh-fed flames curling beneath the iron upon which I stood-a more frightful death even than that of being boiled alive! Had I discovered that mallet but a short time sooner-but no matter, I would by its aid resort to the only expedient now left.

"It was this:-I remembered having a marlinespike in my pocket, and in less time than I have taken in hinting at the consequences of thus using it, I had made an impression upon the sides of the boiler, and soon succeeded in driving it through. The water gushed through the aperture-would they see it -No; the jet could only play against a wooden partition which must hide the stream from view-it must trickle down upon the decks before the leakage would be discovered. Should I drive another hole to make that leakage greater? Why, the water within seemed already to be sensibly diminished-so hot had become that which remained should more escape, would I not hear it bubble and hiss upon the fiery plates of iron that were already scorching the soles of my feet?

......

"Ah! there is a movement-voices-I hear them calling for a crowbar :-The bulkhead cracks as they pry off the planking. They have seen the leak-they are trying to get at it!-Good God! why do they not first dampen the fire ?-Why do they call for the-the

"Stranger, look at that finger! it can never regain its natural size-but it has already done all the service that man could expect from so humble a member-Sir, that hole would have been plugged up on the instant, unless I had jammed my finger | through!

"I heard the cry of horror as they saw it without-the shout to drown the fire-the first stroke of the cold water-pump. They say, too, that I was conscious when they took me out-but I-I remember nothing more till they brought a julep to my bed-side arterwards, AND that julep!—" Cooling! was it?" STRANNGER!!!"

66

Ben turned away his head and wept-He could

no more.

THE FLYING HEAD.

A LEGEND OF SACONDAGA LAKE.
FROM WILD SCENES IN THE FOREST AND PRAIRIE.

"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, Oct. 25th, 1689.-COLDEN'S Five Nations.

It hath tell-tale 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.

THE country about the head-waters 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 war path 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 grounds in quest of the game that still finds 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, except by the white settlers who are slowly extending their clearings among the wild hills of the north.

The "FLYING HEAD," which is supposed to have first driven the original possessors of these huntinggrounds, 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 neighbouring 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 occasionally met with in the crude designs of those degenerate aborigines who earn a scant subsistence by making birchen baskets and ornamented pouches for such travellers as are curious in their manufacture of wampum and porcupine quills; and the origin and history of the Flying Head survives, while even the name of the tribe whose crimes first called it into existence, has passed away for ever.

It was a season of great severity with that forgotten people whose council-fires were lighted on the mountain promontory that divides Sacondaga from the sister lake 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

A hamlet is now growing up on this beautiful mountain slope, and the scenery in the vicinity is likely to be soon better known, from the late establishment of a line of post-coaches between Sacondaga Lake and Saratoga Springs.

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 Ontario, and all move away to a new home beyond its broad waters. The wild rice, of which some had been brought into their country by a runner from a distant nation, would, they thought, support them in their perilous voyage along the shores of the great water, where it grows in such profusion; and they believed that, once safely beyond the lake, it would be easy enough to find a new home abounding in game upon those flowery plains which, as they had heard, lay like one immense garden beyond the chain of inland seas.

The old men of the tribe were indignant at the bare suggestion of leaving the bright streams and sheltered valleys, amid which their spring-time 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 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 us. 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 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.

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 exigencies, 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 dishonouring 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 order to designate the spot where they were to disburden themselves of their gory freight. Resting then upon his oars, he received each head in succession from his companions, and proceeded to tie them together by their scalp-locks, in order to sink

the whole, with a huge stone, to the bottom. But the vengeance of the Master of Life overtook the wretch before his horrid office was accomplished; for no sooner did he receive the last head into his canoe than it began to sink, his feet became entangled in the hideous chain he had been knotting together, and, before his horror-stricken 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 coloured 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 watchers thought that the spreading-scalp-for such now all agreed it was-had raised itself from the water, and become rounded at the top, as if there were a head beneath it. Some thought, too, that they could discover a pair of hideous eyes glaring beneath the dripping locks. They looked on the sixth, and there indeed was a monstrous HEAD floating upon the surface, as if anchored to the spot, around which the water-notwithstanding a blast which swept the lake-was calm and motionless as ever.

Those bad Indians then 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. 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 phrenzied 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 their expanded membrane, raised the

wings from the surface, and seemed for the first time to endow them with vitality. They flapped harshly once or twice upon the billows, and the head rose slowly and heavily from the lake.

An agony of fear seized upon the gazing parricides, but the supernatural creation made no movement to injure them. It only remained balancing itself over the lake, and casting a shadow from its wings that wrapped the valley in gloom. But dreadful was it beneath their withering shade to watch that terrific monster, hovering like a falcon for the stoop, and know not upon what victim it might descend. It was then that they who had sown the gory seed from which it sprung to life, with one impulse sought to escape its presence by flight. Herding together like a troop of deer when the panther is prowling by, they rushed in a body from the scene. But the flapping of the demon pinions was soon heard behind them, and the winged head was henceforth on their track wheresoever it led.

In vain did they cross one mountain barrier after another, plunge into the rocky gorge, or thread the mazy swamp, to escape their fiendish watcher. The Flying Head would rise on tireless wings over the loftiest summit, or dart in arrowy flight through the narrowest passages without furling its pinions: while their sullen threshing would be heard even in those vine-webbed thickets where the little ground bird can scarcely make its way. The very caverns of the earth were no protection to the parricides from its presence; for scarcely would they think they had found a refuge in some sparry cell, when, poised midway between the ceiling and the floor, they would behold the Flying Head glaring upon them. Sleeping or waking, the monster was ever near; they paused to rest, but the rushing of its wings, as it swept around their resting-place in never-ending circles, prevented them from finding forgetfulness in repose; or if, in spite of those blighting pinions that ever fanned them, fatigue did at moments plunge them in uneasy slumbers, the glances of the Flying Head would pierce their very eyelids, and steep their dreams in horror.

What was the ultimate fate of that band of parricides, no one has ever known. Some say that the Master of Life kept them always young, in order that their capability of suffering might never wear out; and these insist that the Flying Head is still pursuing them over the great prairies of the far

west.

Others aver that the glances of the Flying Head turned each of them gradually into stone; and these say that their forms, though altered by the wearing of the rains in the lapse of long years, may still be recognised in those upright rocks which stand like human figures along the shores of some of the neighbouring lakes; though most Indians have another way of accounting for these figures. Certain it is, however, that the Flying Head always comes back to this part of the country about the times of the equinox; and some say even that you may always hear the flapping of its wings whenever such a storm as that we have just weathered is brewing.

soon

MRS. KIRKLAND, formerly Miss Caroline M. Stansbury, is a native, I believe, of New York. On her marriage with the late amiable and accomplished William Kirkland,* after his return from Europe, (where he had spent some time for the purpose of improving his knowledge of modern languages,) he resigned a professorship which he held in Hamilton College, and established a school in the beautiful village of Geneva, on the Seneca Lake, where they resided several years. They subsequently removed into Michigan, where Mrs. Kirkland wrote A New Home: Who'll Follow or Glimpses of Western Life, by Mrs. Mary Clavers, an Actual Settler, and Forest Life, the first of which was published in 1839, and the last in 1842. No works of their class were ever more brilliantly successful than these original and admirable pictures of frontier scenery, woodcraft, and domestic experience. For genial humour, graphic description, and shrewd sense, "Mrs. Clavers" proved herself equal to any writers of her sex, while in delicacy, nice perception of character, and all the more feminine qualities of authorship, there was no one in this country at least to be preferred to her. In 1845 she published

* William Kirkland, son of the Honourable Joseph Kirkland, was born in New Hartford, near Utica, in New York, in the year 1800. He was originally educated for the ministry, but some conscientious scruples kept him from entering upon its sacred duties, and he was appointed first a tutor and then a professor in Hamilton College. He visited Europe for the gratification of a liberal curiosity, and to gain a more perfect mastery of the languages of the continent, and while abroad resided nearly two years in Gottingen. He removed to New

She

Western Clearings,* a collection of tales and sketches illustrative of the same sort of life. It has the strength, freshness, effect and brilliancy, which we associate with the best conception of our native character, and is uniformly saved from those kindred faults which lie so fatally near to this bold class of virtues, by the inborn refinement, practised taste, ready tact, and varied resources which are her special and rare accomplishment. In the roughest scenes she is never coarse; amidst the least cultivated society she never is vulgar. interests us in the wild men and in the wild occurrences of border life, by identifying them with the fortunes and feelings of that humanity of which we are a part. Her sympathies are sensitive and various in their range, but always sound and healthful, and neither extravagant in their objects nor excessive in their degree. The constant presence of strong active sense on the part of the author carries us through the monotonous incidents of western settlement with animation, amusement and instruction. These narratives have throughout that simplicity, vigour, and inherent beauty, which a superior mind, if it be faithful to the great law of genuineness and honesty, never fails of attaining in its representations of the actual. Laying aside factitious models, and seeking only to apprehend the subject before her in its just and permanent characteristics, and to express those views with sincerity and directness, Mrs. Kirkland has attained a success which may well serve as a monitor and guide to those who, upon less

attention chiefly to literature. In October, 1846, he established a religious journal which promised to be very successful; but on the nineteenth of that month his friends were surprised by the intelligence of his sudden and melancholy death. His body was on that day recovered from the Hudson river, near Fishkill. He was returning from a visit to his little son, in the neighbourhood of Newburgh, the previous evening, and being deaf and very near-sighted, he probably made a misstep in the dark, fell into the river, and was rapidly swept away by the current, while the noise of the departing boat prevented those on board from hearing any cries for assistance. He was a fine scholar,an elegant and able writer,and was very much beloved for his many gentlemanly qualities.

American literature. There is but one way

in which we can be, rightly and advantageously, free from the tyranny of British examples. Truth of understanding and truth of feeling must be the only directors to real excellence in untried courses. In literary art, as in the higher one of virtue, it is only when "the truth shall make us free," that we can become "free indeed."

*No. VII. of Wiley and Putnam's Library of American Books.