this interminable forest, did his prophetic eye perceive these lovely
fields, happy homes, and prosperous people, who came after him to make
an Eden of this chosen spot of all the earth? and did it stretch on to
contemplate the ruin and desolation which overspreads it now? How blest
is man that he sees not beyond to-day!

Here he first met the Natchez, and viewed with wonder the flat heads
and soft, gazelle eyes of this strange people. They welcomed his
coming, and tendered him and his people a home. From them he learned
the extent of the great river below, and that it was lost in the great
water that was without limit and had no end. These Indians, according
to their traditions, had once inhabited, as a mighty nation, the
country extending from near the city of Mexico to the Rio Grande, and
were subjects of the Aztec empire of Mexico. They had been persecuted
and oppressed, and determined, in grand council, to abandon the country
and seek a home beyond the Mizezibbee, or Parent-of-many-waters, which
the word signifies.

Their exodus commenced in a body. They were many days in assembling
upon the east bank of the Rio Grande; and thence commenced their long
march. They abandoned their homes and the graves of their ancestors for
a new one in the lovely region they found on the hills extending from
the mouth of the Yazoo to Baton Rouge. Their principal town and seat of
empire was located eleven miles below Natchez, on the banks of Second
Creek, two miles from the Mississippi River. It is a delightful spot of
high table-land, with a small strip of level low-land immediately upon
the margin of the dimpling little stream of sweet water. Upon this flat
they erected the great mound for their temple of the Sun, and the
depository of the holy fire, so sacred in their worship. At each point
of the compass they erected smaller mounds for the residences of their
chief, or child of the Sun, and his ministers of state. In the great
temple upon the principal mound they deposited the fire of holiness,
which they had borne unextinguished from the deserted temple in Mexico,
and began to build their village. Parties went forth to establish other
villages, and before a great while they were located in happy homes in
a land of abundance. They formed treaties of amity with their powerful
but peaceable neighbors, the Choctaws, and ere long with the Chickasaws
and other minor tribes, east, and below them, on the river, the
Tunicas, Houmas, and