had never before been seen by any of his tribe. He stood rooted to the ground. He who had never feared the face of man, trembled like an aspen with superstitious terror. The animals, regardless of his presence, advanced slowly towards him, and passed so near that he might have touched them with his gun. They ascended the bank, and he lost sight of them. When they were fairly out of sight, he recovered from the shock, and stretching out his arms after them, conjured them to return. Finding his adjurations in vain, he rushed up to the bank, but could see nothing of them, which was the more remarkable that the prairie had just been burned over, and for a mile there was no wood or inequality in the ground that could have concealed a much smaller animal than a deer.

He returned to his lodge, made a solemn feast, at which his relatives were assembled, and sung his death-song. He told his wondering auditors that he had received a warning to prepare for his final change. He had seen the spirits of his wife and child. No one presumed to contradict his opinion. Whether founded in reason or not, it proved true in point of fact. Three weeks after, the camp was attacked by the Chippeways. They were repulsed, but Toskatnay, and he only, was killed. No stone tells where he lies, nor can any of the Dahcotahs show the spot. His deeds are forgotten, or, at best, faintly

remembered; thus showing "on what foundation stands the warrior's pride." But his wife still lives in the memory of her people, who speak of her by the name of Weenokhenchah Wandeeteekah, or the Brave Woman.

THE KELP GATHERER.

TH

HE stranger who wanders along the terrific masses of crag that overhang the green and foaming waters of the Atlantic, on the western coasts of Ireland, feels a melancholy interest excited in his mind, as he turns aside from the more impressive grandeurs of the scene, and gazes on the small stone heaps that are scattered over the moss on which he treads. They are the graves of the nameless few whose bodies have been from time to time ejected from the bosom of the ocean, and cast upon those lonely crags to startle the early fishermen with their ghastly and disfigured bulk. Here they meet, at the hands of the pitying mountaineers, the last offices of Christian charity-a grave in the nearest soft earth, with no other ceremonial than the humble peasant's prayer. Here they lie, uncoffined, unlamented, unclaimed by mourning friends, starting like sudden spectres of death from the depths of the ocean, to excite a wild fear, a passing thought of pity, a vain inquiry in the hamlet, and then sink into the earth in

mystery and in silence, to be no more remembered on its surface.

The obscurity which envelopes the history of those unhappy strangers affords a subject to the speculative traveller, on which he may give free play to the wings of his imagination. Few, indeed, can pass these deserted sepulchres without endeavouring for a moment to penetrate in fancy the darkness which enshrouds the fate of their mouldering tenants; without beholding the progress of the ruin that struck from beneath the voyager's feet the firm and lofty fabric to which he had confidently trusted his existence; without hearing the shrieks of the despairing crew, and the stern and horrid burst of the roused-up ocean, as it dealt the last stroke upon the groaning timbers of the wreck, and scattered the whole p'le far and wide, in countless atoms, upon the boiling surface of the deep and again, without turning in thought to the far-away homes, at which the tale of the wanderers was never told to the pale young widow that dreamed herself still a wife, and lived on from morn to morn, in the fever of a vain suspense -to the helpless parent, that still hoped for the offices of filial kindness from the hand that was now mouldering in a distant graveand to the social fireside, over whose evening pastimes the long silence of an absent friend had thrown a gloom that the certainty of woe or gladness could never remove.

Among those nameless tombs, within the space of the last few years, the widow of a

fisherman, named Reardon, was observed to spend a great portion of her time. Her husband had died young, perishing in a sudden storm, which swept his canoe from the coast side into the waste of sea beyond it; and his wife was left to inhabit a small cottage near the crags, and to support, by the labour of her hands, an only child, who was destined to inherit little more than the blessing, the virtue, and the affections of his parent. The poor widow endeavoured to procure a subsistence for her boy, and for herself, by gathering the kelp which was thrown upon the crags, and which was burned for the purpose of manufacturing soap from its ashes; while the youth employed his yet unformed strength in tilling the small garden, that was confined by a quickset hedge, at their cottage side. They were fondly attached, and toiled incessantly to obtain the means of comfort, rather for each other than for themselves; but, with all their exertions, Fortune left them in the rearward of her favour. The mother beheld, with a mother's agony, the youthful limbs and features of her boy exhibit the sickly effects of habitual privation and habitual toil; while the son mourned to see the feebleness of a premature old age begin to steal upon the health and vigour of his parent.

In these difficulties, a prospect of certain advantage and probable good fortune induced the young man to leave his mother and his native country for some years. The distresses and disturbances which agitated that