tlesnakes rattled around us, and bears and carcajous--those
little tigers that crouch on the branches of trees, and leap without
warning on their prey--made the latter part of our journey full of
strange perils and difficulties. For after travelling for twenty-seven
days, we crossed the Alleghany mountains, and got into a tract of
swampy, wooded ground.

"At sunset a tempest arose and darkened all the heavens. Then the sky
opened, and the noise of the tempestuous forest was drowned in long,
rolling detonations of thunder, and the wild lightning flamed down upon
us, and set the forest on fire. Crouching down under the bent trunk of a
birch-tree, with my beloved on my lap, I sheltered her from the
streaming rain, and warmed her naked feet in my hands. What cared I,
though the very heavens broke above me, and the earth rocked to its
foundations? The soft, warm arms of Atala were around my neck, her
breast lay against my breast, and I felt her heart beating as wildly as
my own.

"'O my beloved,' I said, 'open your heart to me, and tell me the secret
that makes you so sorrowful. Do you weep at leaving your native land?'

"'No,' she said. 'I do not regret leaving the land of palm trees, for my
mother is dead, and Simaghan was only my foster father.'

"'Then who was your father, my beloved?' I cried in astonishment.

"'My father was a Spaniard,' said Atala, 'but my grandmother threw water
in his face, and made him go away, and she then forced my mother to give
herself in marriage to Simaghan, who desired her. But she died from
grief at being parted from my father, and Simaghan adopted me as his own
daughter. I have never seen my father, though my mother, before she
died, baptised me, so that his God should be my God. Oh, Chactas, I wish
I could see my father before I die!'

"'What is his name?' I said. 'Where does he live?'

"'He lives at St. Augustin,' she replied. 'His name is Philip Lopez.'

"'O, my beloved,' I cried, pressing Atala wildly to may breast. 'Oh,
what happiness, what joy! You are the daughter of Lopez, the daughter of
my foster father!'

"Atala was frightened at my outburst of passion, but when she knew that
it was her father who had rescued me from the Creeks, and brought me up
as his own son, she became as wildly joyful as I was. Rising up from my
arms, with a strange, fierce, and yet tender light in her eyes, she took
something out of her bosom and put in her mouth, and then fell on my
breast in an