e evil eyes cast upon him from every copse. The bird and bat, as
they flit through the shades of night, magnified by the misty
exhalations, seem the envious demons of the spot; and, foolish man! he
more regards the dangers which are unreal than those which are
real--is more afraid of the spirits which cannot harm, than of the
ravenous beasts and poisonous serpents with which he is environed, and
whose fangs are death in its most hideous shape.

Having introduced this not altogether gratuitous description of a spot
celebrated in America for its picturesque situation and horrors, I
resume the rhythmical tale of the chief of the Roanokes.

It was many seasons ago,
How long I cannot tell my brother,
That this sad thing befell;
The tale was old in the time of my father,
To whom it was told by my mother's mother.
My brother hears--'tis well--
Nor may he doubt my speech;
The red man's mind receives a tale
As snow the print of a mocassin;
But, when he hath it once,
It abides like a footstep chisell'd in rock,
The hard and flinty rock.
The pale man writes his tales
Upon a loose and fluttering leaf,
Then gives it to the winds that sweep
Over the ocean of the mind;
The red man his on the evergreen
Of his trusty memory(1).
When he from the far-off land would know
The tales of his father's day,
He unrolls the spirit-skin[A],
And utters what it bids:
The Indian pours from his memory
His song, as a brook its babbling flood
From a lofty rock into a dell,
In the pleasant summer-moon.--
My brother hears.--

He hears my words--'tis well--
And let him write them down
Upon the spirit-skin,
That, when he has cross'd the lake,
The Great Salt Lake,
The lake, where the gentle spring winds dwell,
And the mighty fishes sport,
And has called his babes to his knee,
And his beauteous dove to his arms,
And has smok'd in the calumet
With the friends he left behind,
And his father, and mother, and kin,
Are gather'd around his fire,
To learn what red men say,
He may the skin unroll, and bid
His Okki this tradition read[B]--
The parting words of the Roanoke,
And his tale of a lover and maiden true,
Who paddle the Lake in a White Canoe.

There liv'd upon the Great Arm's brink[C],
In that far day,
The warlike Roanokes,
The masters of