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where we found them all surrounded by saddles, harnesses, guns, pistols, telescopes, knives, and in short their complete appointments for the prairie. R., who professed a taste for natural history, sat at a table stuffing a woodpecker; the brother of the captain, who was an Irishman, was splicing a trail rope on the floor, as he had been an amateur sailor. The captain pointed out, with much complacency, the different articles of their outfit. You see,' said he, 'that we are all old travellers.' I am convinced that no party ever went upon the prairie better provided. The hunter whom they had employed, a surly-looking Canadian, named Sorel, and their muleteer, an Amercian from St Louis, were lounging about the building. In a little log stable close at hand were their horses and mules, selected by the captain, who was an excellent judge.

The alliance entered into, we left them to complete their arrangements, while we pushed our own to all convenient speed. The emigrants for whom our friends professed such contempt were encamped on the prairie about eight or ten miles distant, to the number of a thousand or more, and new parties were constantly passing out from Independence to join them. They were in great confusion, holding meetings, passing resolutions, and drawing up regulations, but unable to unite in the choice of leaders to conduct them across the prairie. Being at leisure one day, I rode over to Independence. The town was crowded. A multitude of shops had sprung up to furnish the emigrants and Santa Fe traders with necessaries for their journey; and there was an incessant hammering and banging from a dozen blacksmith's sheds, where the heavy waggons were being repaired, and the horses and oxen shod. The streets were thronged with men, horses and mules. While I was in the town, a train of emigrant wagons from Illinois passed through, to join the camp on the prairie, and stopped in the principal street. A multitude of healthy children's faces were peeping out from under the covers of the wagons. Here and there a buxom damsel was seated on horseback, holding over her sunburnt face an old umbrella or a parasol, once gaudy enough, but now miserably faded. The men, very sober-looking countrymen, stood about their oxen; and as I passed I noticed three old fellows who, with their long whips in their hands, were zealously discussing the doctrine of regeneration. The emigrants, however, are not all of this stamp. Among them are some of the vilest outcasts in the country. I have often perplexed myself to divine the various motives that give impulse to this strange migration; but whatever they may be, whether an insane hope of a better condition in life, or a desire of shaking off restraints of law and society, or mere restlessness; certain it is, that multitudes bitterly repent the journey, and after they have reached the land of promise, are happy enough to escape from it.

In the course of seven or eight days we had brought our preparations near to a close; meanwhile our friends had completed theirs, and becoming tired of Westport, they told us that they would set out in advance and wait at the crossing of the Kanzas till we should

come up. Accordingly K. and the muleteer went forward with the wagon and tent, while the captain and his brother, together with Sorel, and a trapper named Boisverd, who had joined them, followed with the band of horses. The commencement of the journey was ominous, for the captain was scarcely a mile from Westport, riding along in state at the head of his party, leading his intended buffalo horse by a rope, when a tremendous thunder-storm came on, and drenched them all to the skin. They hurried on to reach the place about seven miles off, where R. was to have had the camp in readiness to receive them; but this prudent person, when he saw the storm approaching, had selected a sheltered glade in the woods where he pitched his tent, and was sipping a comfortable cup of coffee, while the captain gallopped for miles beyond through the rain to look for him. At length the storm cleared away, and the sharpeyed trapper succeeded in discovering his tent: R. had by this time finished his coffee and was seated on a buffalo-robe smoking his pipe. The captain was one of the most easy-tempered men in existence, so he bore his ill-luck with great composure, shared the dregs of the coffee with his brother, and laid down to sleep in his wet clothes.

We ourselves had our share of the deluge. We were leading a pair of mules to Kanzas when the storm broke. Such sharp and incessant flashes of lightning, such stunning and continuous thunder, I never heard before. The woods were completely obscured by the diagonal sheet of rain that fell with a heavy roar, and rose in spray from the ground; and the streams rose so rapidly that we could hardly ford them. At length, looming through the rain, we saw the log-house of Colonel Chick, who received us with his usual bland hospitality; while his wife who, though a little soured and stiffened by too frequent attendance on camp-meetings, was not behind him in hospitable feeling, supplied us with the means of repairing our drenched and bedraggled condition. The storm clearing away at about sunset, opened a noble prospect from the porch of the Colonel's house, which stands upon a high hill. The sun streamed from the breaking clouds upon the swift and angry Missouri, and on the immense expanse of luxuriant forest that stretched from its banks back to the distant bluffs.

Returning on the next day to Westport, we received a message from the captain, who had ridden back to deliver it in person, but finding that we were in Kanzas, had entrusted it with an acquaintance of his named Vogel, who kept a small grocery and liquor shop. Whiskey by the way circulates more freely in Westport than is altogether safe in a place where every man carries a loaded pistol in his pocket. As we passed this establishment, we saw Vogel's broad German face and knavish-looking eyes thrust from his door. He said he had something to tell us, and invited us to take a dram. Neither his liquor nor his message were very palatable. The captain had returned to give us notice that R., who assumed the direction of his party, had determined upon another route from that agreed upon between us; and instead of taking the course of the traders, to pass northward by Fort Leavenworth, and follow the

path marked out by the dragoons in their expedition of last summer. To adopt such a plan without consulting us, we looked upon as a very high-handed proceeding; but suppressing our dissatisfaction as well as we could, we made up our minds to join them at Fort Leavenworth, where they were to wait for us.

Accordingly, our preparation being now complete, we attempted one fine morning to commence our journey. The first step was an unfortunate one. No sooner were our animals put in harness, than the shaft-mule reared and plunged, burst ropes and straps, and nearly flung the cart into the Missouri. Finding her wholly uncontrollable, we exchanged her for another, with which we were furnished by our friend Mr. Boone of Westport, a grandson of Daniel Boone, the pioneer. This foretaste of prairie experience was very soon followed by another. Westport was scarcely out of sight, when we encountered a deep muddy gulley, of a species that afterward became but too familiar to us; and here for the space of an hour or more the cart stuck fast.

A SONG.

LUFF WHEN YOU CAN, BEAR AWAY WHEN YOU MUST.'

BY JAMES KENNARD, JR.

WHEN the mariner sees, far ahead on the ocean,
By the yesty white waves, in their wildest commotion,
That breakers are lying direct in his path,

He dashes not onward to brave all their wrath,
But, still in his compass and helm placing trust,
Luffs, luffs if he can, bears away when he must.

Mid the lightning's sharp flash, mid the thunder's deep roar,
When the foaming waves dash on the rocky sea-shore,
When Hope disappears, and the terrible form

Of Death rides triumphant upon the dark storm,

In GoD and their ship the bold mariners trust,

Luff, luff while they can, yield a point when they must.

Then make it your rule, on the billows of life,
So to sail as to shun all commotion and strife;
And thus shall your voyage of existence be pleasant,
Hope smile on the future, Joy beam on the present;
If you in the rule of the mariner trust,

Luff, luff while you can, bear away when you must.

And when the lee-shore of grim Death is in view,
And the tempests of fate your lone vessel pursue!
Even while your last prayers unto God are addressed,
Though prepared for the worst, still hope on for the best;
Carry sail till the last stitch of canvass is burst —
Luff, luff while you can, drive ashore when you must.
Portsmouth, N. H., January, 1847.

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LITERARY NOTICES.

THE NEW TIMON: A ROMANCE OF LONDON. In one volume. the third London edition. Philadelphia: CAREY AND HART.

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pp. 208. First American from

Wɛ have made our way through this book, having been impelled to the labor, first from seeing Third edition' marked upon the London cover, and secondly, because we have observed divers encomiums going the rounds of the press, commending the volume to the especial attention of the public. Now as the public' and ourselves have somewhat to do with each other, and as we dislike to have the labor of our forced march for nothing, we propose to say something of this same New Timon.' We were taken rather aback, we confess, by the tone of self-confidence assumed by the author. Hear his promises :

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Having thus formally announced his claims, let us see how the author appears when tried in the light of them. We recollect among the occurrences of our boyhood to have seen and read a play by that clever sheep-stealer, WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE, called Timon of Athens.' This New Timon' naturally brought to our mind the story of the man-hater, told by the great dramatist. And we will here admit that we fairly acquit our author of any imitation, servile or otherwise, of the 'Bard of Avon.' Still it was no trifling attempt, it strikes us-doubtless the author thought differently—to assume for his volume a similar name; and as if the other work were specially in view, to dub this par excellence The New Timon.' We will devote a brief space, first to the subject of the work, and secondly to what we conceive to be its poetic merit.

The Timon of Athens' is admitted to be one of the best satires ever written. It contains the most striking and at the same time the most natural examples of ingratitude that of a state to its defender and of friends to a private benefactor. It shows too the folly of indiscriminate liberality and of thoughtless profuseness, together with the short-lived aud uncertain duration of purchased praise. We have read the 'New Timon' through and through, to find in it some moral; some object, some particular design; but we can find none, at least none worthy of a published volume. We have the story of a half-blood:

THE offspring of an Indian maid
And English chief, whose orient hues betrayed

VOL. XXIX.

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