ould bring forth, and fully prepared to punish the attempts
which were to be made against the peace of his family. He made all
those careful preparations for impending danger which a wise and
prudent chief should make. He shut up his daughter in his lodge, and,
calling around him the Braves of his nation, he made them acquainted
with the designs of the Muscogulgee, and bade them keep guard around
the endangered cabin and its coveted treasure, but on no account--if
it could be dispensed with--to do harm to the strangers. Having
prepared to oppose violence by violence, if need should be, he,
wishing to prevent bloodshed, for he was a man of peace, called to him
the lover of his daughter, and addressed him thus:

"I did say thou couldst not have my daughter, but upon one
condition--I recall my word, and add thereto a second. She shall be,
with the consent of her father, the companies of thy homeward journey,
if thy heart be strong enough to undertake one quest, and it be the
will of the Great Spirit that thou be spared to accomplish it. Let the
valiant Muscogulgee, who has man written on his brow and eye, though
the down on his cheek proclaims him boy, listen to the words of the
father of Winona, and remember that the manifestation of a strong
heart, at this time, may avail much to gain him the object he so
ardently covets.

"Between the two mountains which rear their lofty heads on the
northern branch of the river of the Cherokees, there is a deep valley,
in which the beams of the sun, being concentrated and drawn together,
create a heat so insupportable that nothing can live there but those
reptiles, which are ripened and fattened to full growth only by fervid
and burning suns. In these deep valleys have dwelt, ever since the
beginning of the world, those Bright Old Inhabitants, the chiefs and
fathers of the rattlesnakes, who are called by our nation the "Kind
Old Kings," being, indeed, the sovereigns of all the tribes or species
of snakes to be found on the earth. It has been death to venture
within their limits, and almost as fatal to displease them by speaking
ill of them, or by harming any of their subjects. Hence we know
nothing of their villages, or their numbers, or their policy--whether
they die like ourselves, or if the copy of nature be eternal in them.
These things would I know; but above all would I know if the lights
which shine so transcendently in those valleys be, as many say, the
eyes of those Kind Old