All I know in relation to these, I acquired from a dreamy and solitary
man employed by my father to fit myself and brother for college. He
read French, and was fond of tracing all he could find in the writings
of the historians of the first settlement of Louisiana and Mississippi,
and of the history, habits, and customs of the aborigines of the
country. He knew something of the adventures of De Soto and La Salle,
and something of the traditions of the Natchez. He was a melancholy
man, and perished by his own hand in the chamber that you occupy. My
sister is curious in such matters, and from her researches in some old
musty volumes she has found in the possession of an old European
family, she has made quite a history of the Natchez, and from the old
servants much of that of the first white or English occupants of this
section. For myself, I have little curiosity in that way. My business
forbids much reading of that kind, and indeed much of anything else,
and I am glad that my tastes and my business accord. I would not
exchange one crop of cotton grown on the village-field, for a perfect
knowledge of the history of every Indian tribe upon the continent."

"I am no antiquarian, sir. A life on a plantation I suppose must be
most irksome and monotonous to a young lady, unless she should have
some resource besides her rural employments."

"Our only amusements, sir," said Alice, "are reading, riding, and
music, with an occasional visit to a neighbor. I ride through the old
forest and consult the great patriarchal trees, and they tell me many
strange stories. When the ruthless axe has prostrated one of these
forest monarchs, my good palfrey waits for me, and I count the
concentric circles and learn his age. Some I have seen which have
yielded to man's use or cupidity who have looked over the younger
scions of the woods, and upon the waters of the mighty river a thousand
years."

"Indeed, miss," replied the guest, "I had not supposed the natural life
of any of our forest trees extended beyond three, or at most four
centuries."

"The tulip or poplar-tree and the red-oak in the rich loam of these
hills live long and attain to giant proportions. The vines which cling
in such profusion to many of these are commensurate with them in time.
They spring up at their bases and grow with them: the tree performing
the kindly office of nurse, lifting them in her arms and carrying them
until their summits, with united leaves, seem to k