parties whooped, and began to fire
indiscriminately, and every shot was answered by a whoop. One shot his
arrow into the square, but falling short of the enemy, he covered
himself with corn and crept thither to regain the arrow, and bore it
back in safety, honored with a triumphant yell as he returned. After
much of this bush skirmishing, both parties burst into the square. There
was unremitted firing and war-whooping, the music of chanting and of the
pebbled gourd going all the while. At length the fighters joined in
procession, dancing a triumphal dance around the mound, plunging thence
headlong into the sacred square and all around it, and then scampering
around the outside, and pouring back to the battle square; and the
closing whoop being given, the entire multitude from the battle square
rushed, helter-skelter, yelping, some firing as they went, and others
pelting down the spectators from their high places, with the corn-stalks
that had served for guns, and which gave blows so powerful that those
who laughed at them as weapons before, rubbed their shoulders and walked
away ashamed.

We resumed our conveyances homeward, and heard the splashing and
shouting, as we departed, of the warriors in the water.

Leave was now given to taste the corn, and all ate their fill, and, I
suppose, did not much refrain from drinking; for I heard that every
pathway and field around was in the morning strewed with sleeping
Indians.

We passed the day following in visits to the picturesque scenery of the
neighborhood. We saw the fine falls of the Talapoosa, where the broken
river tumbles over wild and fantastic precipices, varying from forty to
eighty or a hundred feet in hight; and when wandering among the slippery
rocks, we passed an old Indian with his wife and child and bow and
arrows. They had been shooting fishes in the stream, from a point
against which the fishes were brought to them by the current. The
scenery and the natives would have formed a fine picture. An artist of
the neighborhood made me a present of a view of these falls, which I
will show you when we meet.

The next part of the festival among the red folks--and which I
did not see, being that day on my 'tour in search of the
picturesque'--consisted, I was told, in the display of wives urging out
their husbands to hunt deer. When, from our travels among fine scenery,
we went down to the sacred square, towards night, we met Indians with
deer slung over their hors