ce
reaches its acme in the neighbourhood of the cypress swamp, but on the
further side of that it assumes a softer character, and the perplexed
wanderer through these beautiful scenes finds himself on a sudden
transported into one of the most enchanting of Mexican landscapes, where
the myrtle, the stately tulip-tree, and the palma-christi, alternate
with the dark-leaved mangrove, and on the rising grounds the cotton-tree
and sycamore spread their silver-green branches above a sward of the
tenderest verdure. The whole forest is interwoven, like a vast tent or
awning, with the jessamine and the wild vine, which, springing from the
ground, grapple themselves to the tree-trunks, ascend to the highest
branches, and then again descending, cling to another stem, and creeping
from mangrove to myrtle, from magnesia to papaw, from papaw to the
tulip-tree, form one vast and interminable bower. The broad belt of
land, in the centre of which the waters of the Natchez flow, presents to
the beholder a waving and luxuriant field of rustling palmettos,
extending from the forest a full half mile to the stream, in whose
waters the mangrove and cypress dip their drooping foliage.

It was an afternoon of that magnificent latter autumn known as the
Indian summer, and the sun, golden and glorious, as it is only to be
seen in that country and at that season, was declining behind the
summits of the trees which fringe the western shore of the Natchez. Its
beams already assumed that rich variety of tint, so beautiful to behold,
varying from bright green to golden, from purple to orange, as the rays
passed between the leaves of the myrtle, the palma-christi, or some
other variety of the surrounding foliage. Not a cloud was in the
heavens, the air was balm itself, the soft evening stillness was only
now and then broken by some babbling parroquet, by the whistling tones
of the mockingbird, or the sudden rising of a flock of waterfowl,
thousands of which floated on the broad bosom of the Natchez, and
dressed their plumage for their winter flight. Along a narrow path
between the forest and the palmetto field above referred to, a female
figure was seen tripping towards a small opening in the wood, formed by
the uprooting of a mighty sycamore. On reaching the prostrate tree she
leaned against a branch, apparently to take breath. She was a young girl
of about twenty years of age, whose complexion denoted Indian parentage,
but whose countenance had someth