Having despatched it to his room, I flew to the stable, roused der Teufel, who had gathered up his legs in the straw for the night, flogged him furiously out of the village, and giving him the rein as he entered the forest, enjoyed the scenery in the humour of mad old Hieronymo in the Spanish tragedy :-" the moon dark, the stars extinct, the winds blowing, the owls shrieking, the toads croaking, the minutes jarring, and the clock striking twelve!" Early the next day Tom's "tiger" dismounted at Barhydt's door with an answer to my note as follows: - "DEAR FRED,-The devil must have informed you of a secret I supposed safe from all the world. Be assured I should have chosen no one but yourself to support me on the occasion, and however you have discovered my design upon your treasure, a thousand thanks for your generous consent. I expected no less from your noble nature. Yours devotedly,-Toм. "P.S.-I shall endeavour to be at Barhydt's, with materials for the fifth act of our comedy, to-morrow morning." "Comedy!" call you this, Mr. Fane! I felt my heart turn black as I threw down the letter. After a thousand plans of revenge formed and abandoned, borrowing old Barhydt's rifles, loading them deliberately, and discharging them again into the air, I flung myself exhausted on the bed, and reasoned myself back to my magnanimity. I would be his groomsman! It was a morning like the burst of a millennium on the world. I felt as if I should never forgive the birds for their mocking enjoyment of it. The wild heron swung up from the reeds, the lotuses shook out their dew into the lake as the breeze stirred them, and the senseless old Dutchman sat fishing in his canoe, singing one of his unintelligible psalms to a quick measure that half maddened me. I threw myself upon the yielding floor of pine-tassels on the edge of the lake, and with the wretched school philosophy, "Si gravis est, brevis est," endeavoured to put down the tempest of my feelings. A carriage rattled over the little bridge, mounted the ascent rapidly, and brought up at Barhydt's door. "Fred!" shouted Tom, "Fred!" I gulped down a choking sensation in my throat, and rushed up the bank to him. A stranger was dismounting from his horse. "Quick!" said Tom, shaking my hand hurriedly, "there is no time to lose. Out with your inkhorn, Mr. Poppletree, and have your papers signed while I tie up my ponies." "What is this, Sir?" said I, starting back as the stranger deliberately presented me with a paper, in which my own name was written in conspicuous letters. The magistrate gazed at me with a look of astonishment. "A contract of marriage, I think, between Mr. Frederick and Miss Katherine Lorimer, spinster. Are you the gentleman named in that instrument, Sir?" At this moment my sister, leading the blushing girl by the hand,' came and threw her arms about my neck, and drawing her within my reach, ran off and left us together. There are some pure moments in this life that description would only profane. We were married by the village magistrate in that magnificent sanctuary of the forest, old Barhydt and his lotuses the only indifferent witnesses of vows as passionate as ever trembled upon human lips. I had scarce pressed her to my heart and dashed the tears from my eyes, when Fane, who had looked more at my sister than at the bride during the ceremony, left her suddenly, and thrusting a roll of parchment into my pocket, ran off to bring up his ponies. I was on the way to Saratoga, a married man, and my bride on the seat beside me, before I had recovered from my astonishment. "Pray," said Tom, "if it be not an impertinent question, and you can find breath in your ecstacies, how did you find out that your sister had done me the honour to accept the offer of my hand." The resounding woods rung with his unmerciful laughter at the explanation. "And pray," said I, in my turn, "if it is not an impertinent question, and you can find a spare breath in your ecstacies, by what magic did you persuade old Frump to trust his ward and her title-deeds to your treacherous keeping?" ac "It is a long story, my dear Fred, and I will give you the particulars when you pay me the Virginia bloods' you wot of. Suffice it for the present, that Mr. Frump believes Mr. Tom Fane (alias Jacob Phipps, Esq., sleeping partner of a banking-house at Liverpool) to be the cepted suitor of his fair ward. In his extreme delight at seeing her in so fair a way to marry into a bank, he generously made her a present of her own fortune, signed over his right to control it by a document in your possession, and will undergo as agreeable a surprise in about five minutes as the greatest lover of excitement could desire." The ponies dashed on. The sandy ascent by the Pavilion Spring was surmounted, and in another minute we were at the door of Congress Hall. The last stragglers from the breakfast-table were lounging down the colonnade, and old Frump sat reading his newspaper under the portico. "Aha! Mr. Phipps," said he, as Tom drove up, "back so soon, eh? Why, I thought you and Kitty would be billing it till dinner-time!" "Sir!" said Tom, very gravely, "you have the honour of addressing Captain Thomas Fane, of his Majesty's-th Fusileers, and whenever you have a moment's leisure I shall be happy to submit to your perusal a certificate of the marriage of Miss Katherine Lorimer to the gentleman I have the pleasure to present to you. Mr. Frump, Mr. At the mention of my name, the blood in Mr. Frump's ruddy countenance turned suddenly to the colour of the Tiber. Poetry alone can express the feeling pictured in his countenance : "If every atom of a dead man's flesh Should creep each one with a particular life, Upon a feverish head made suddenly bald." George Washington Jefferson Frump, Esq., left Congress Hall the same evening, and has since ungraciously refused an invitation to Captain Fane's wedding-possibly from his having neglected to invite him on a similar occasion at Saratoga. This last, however, I am free to say, is a gratuitous supposition of my own. SLINGSBY. TWO SONNETS. BY MRS. MARDYN, FORMERLY OF DRURY-LANE THEATRE. TO THE MORNING STAR. MEEK Hermit of the Sphere! whose watch-fire bright When sink such weary stars as wait on night, So fair, like rains of silver, falls thy sheen- Nor ask a gaudier light, a bolder sound. So the wild maid in sylvan cabin bred, If thence to courtly crowds and splendour borne, THE WANDerer. Written at Genoa, in November, 1822. The roving merchant, whom a froward fate Or patient traverse Barca's burning sand;— A home of loves to greet his fond return. But ah! for her whose home lies fallen low Whose social ties with life are rent in twain Nor kin-nor friend-a hermit in her woe What charm may that faint wanderer's heart sustain ? LOS PUELCHES; OR, THE PAMPA INDIANS. "THERE is something," says Washington Irving, " in the character and habits of the North American Indian, taken in connexion with the scenery over which he is accustomed to range, its vast lakes, boundless forests, majestic rivers, and trackless plains, that is to my mind wonderfully striking and sublime." I know not if the observation of the elegant writer I have just quoted does not still more forcibly apply to the aboriginal inhabitants of the southern portion of the American continent, many of whose tribes have to this day maintained that proud independence, the main pillar of savage virtue, and whose lofty spirits have never yet been humiliated and debased by a sense of inferiority, or corrupted by the withering breath of civilization. And yet, notwithstanding that the man of savage life presents to the philosopher so interesting a field for study and research, it is really singular how few and barren are the facts we are in possession of concerning him. The early conquerors of America, and even the missionaries, have never given us a true and faithful description of these [people; and, with the view of magnifying their own exploits, have grossly exaggerated the number of Indian nations, and disfigured their character by ridiculous stories of barbarism and cannibalism, which, even to this day, are accredited by the ignorant vulgar. At the period of the conquest, the territory at present constituting a part of the Argentine republic, that of the Cisplatina republic, or the Banda Oriental, and the southern portion of the dominions of the Dictator Francia, were inhabited by the following nations:-The Charnas, Yaros, Bohanes, Chanos, Minurnes, and the Pampas. Although the most perfect physical resemblance existed between all these tribes, they were strongly contradistinguished both in manners and language. The Pampas-the subject of the present paper, and who have cost the Spaniards more blood than all the armies of the Peruvian Incas, or those of the Mexican Montezuma-led a wandering life between the thirty-sixth and thirty-ninth degrees of latitude; they were first known by the name of Querandis or Puelches, because every division of the nation has its own distinctive appellation, and which in consequence led to the erroneous supposition that they were so many distinct tribes. This nation opposed the invaders with such obstinate pertinacity, that, after experiencing a considerable loss, they obliged them to abandon their newly-founded city of Buenos Ayres. But, struck with the importance of the position, the Spaniards came a second time, and being strong in cavalry, at that period an arm as terrible to the Indians as they have since made it to their Spanish oppressors, the Pampas were unable to resist, and retired to the territory they have since inhabited, where they exist by hunting the yatoo, the hare, and the ostrich, which on these boundless plains are found in great abundance*. But in a very short time after the arrival of the Spaniards, * Before the revolution, it was computed that there existed in the province of Buenos Ayres twelve million oxen, and three to four million horses, without comprising the innumerable herds of wild cattle without proprietors. At that period, and even at the present day, an ox was frequently killed for its tongue and hide, and the carcass left for the vultures of the plains. the wild horses had multiplied to such an astonishing degree, that the Pampas began to catch them; and their flesh, being found palatable, has since constituted their ordinary food. The Spaniards, on the other hand, deriving an immense commerce from the hides and tallow of these wild animals, soon thinned the numerous herds that extended on the west to the Cordillera, and on the south to the very confines of Patagonia. Thus the Pampas, deprived of their ordinary means of subsistence, began to make incursions into the Spanish territory-inde bellum; hence the origin of those bloody wars that have ever since almost continually raged between the Pampas and the descendants of Spaniards; in the course of which whole provinces have been laid waste by their devastating fury, the communication between Buenos and Chile frequently interrupted, and the safety of that city itself more than once endangered. And yet the number of these warriors, who have so long set at defiance the Spanish power, never exceeded a thousand. Living constantly in the open air, naked, and subsisting on horse-flesh, prizing beyond everything else their savage independence, these children of Nature present a singular and interesting contrast to the condition of their fellow men in civilized society, whose numerous trammels and complicated misery so justify the observation of Lucan, that— "Paucis humanum vivit genus." In person the Pampa is about six feet high, strongly limbed, with a broad flat countenance, wearing an habitual expression of melancholy and sternness. Neither the men nor the women ever cut or comb their hair; the former bring it up to a point, and tie it with a thong round their head; the latter part it on the forehead à la Vierge, making with the ends two thick tails, which fall back over the neck and the arms. When in the Pampas both sexes go nearly naked; but those who, during the moments of truce that sometimes prevail, come down to Buenos Ayres, adopt the poncho, which they ornament in a rude fashion with bones and feathers. Every chief inhabits a separate district, which they change as soon as forage becomes scarce, for they are unacquainted with even the simplest elements of agriculture. Laws they have none; and their religion is of so complicated a nature, as to render it doubtful if they possess any exact notions of a Supreme Being; but that they believe in a future state is evident by their funeral rites, and their ideas of the pleasures of Paradise; these they make consist in hunting the gama and the ostrich during the day, and in carousing through the night. Thus, on the death of an Indian, his bolas and his favourite steeds are slaughtered and buried with him, and also a large portion of the strong fermented liquor distilled from the cactus, of which they are so passionately fond. Polygamy, so common among the other Indian nations, is rarely found among the Pampas, so that the social condition of their women is infinitely superior to that of those of the other tribes. But it is in their system of warfare that these hardy children of Nature will excite our liveliest admiration, by a display of daring intrepidity, a lofty contempt of death, unsurpassed by any people who have ever existed. Strange as it may appear, with the use of the bow they * Azara relates the following anecdote of the courage of these Indians :-Five of them, who had been made prisoners, were put on board a line-of-battle ship, and |