tones of strife, or the merry ones of joy, laughing and
weeping, wooing and strife, signs that they were possessed of the
various passions and emotions which find a place in the breasts of
mortals. Between these mountains lay the deep valley spoken of, but
what it was which glittered and glistened in it, he knew not. Whatever
it was, it shone with a splendour which eclipsed the meridian beams of
the sun. The whole space between the two mountains seemed a glare of
light, which dazzled even more than the fiercest glare of noon in the
Month of Thunder. What still more astonished and perplexed the youth
was, that the light seemed of various colours, ever changing, never
for a moment wearing the same appearance. Now it wore the hue of the
maple leaf in autumn, now of the tuft of the blue heron--now it was
purple, now green, now yellow, and then it seemed a mixture of them
all, a blending of all the colours ever beheld into one. Astonished
and dismayed, but still determined to win the hand of the beautiful
Winona or perish, the Guard of the Red Arrows undauntedly entered the
valley, and approached the scene of wondrous splendour. Moving with
great difficulty, for the entrance was overrun with briars and many
other vicious impediments, he came all at once to a clear field, and
beheld what had so enchanted and spell-bound at a distance--what so
filled with horror now it was nearer beheld. He saw the earth covered
with rattlesnakes of a more enormous size than any ever beheld by man,
ay, beyond what even his imagination had pictured in his most
restless and diseased hours of sleep. The bodies of many of them were
larger than the trunks of the largest forest trees, and so unwieldy
that, when they would turn round, they were compelled to take a circle
almost as wide as their length. But bountiful nature, which always
compensates for a defect or disadvantage by adding an excellence, made
up for the heavy motion of their bodies by bestowing upon them the
power of irresistible fascination. She gave to them an eye--to each a
single eye--placing it in the centre of their foreheads, possessing
the power to draw to them every living creature. It was this eye which
emitted the wonderful light which had so dazzled the Muscogulgee at a
distance, and still more dazzled now that he was within reach of the
horrid fascination. These eyes were of every possible colour, and the
light they sent forth was as various as the colour of the eyes. Nor
c