The mother of Zulmiera was a very beautiful Carib woman, who, in that disgraceful partition of them among the English, (after the massacre of their male friends at St. Kitts during Sir Thomas Warner’s government of that island,) fell to the share of a young Englishman, a follower of Sir Thomas Warner’s son, in his after colonization of Antigua. Xamba accompanied her master to his new residence, and there bore him a daughter; but dying soon after, the infant was brought up in the governor’s family. After the reduction of Antigua by Sir George Ayscue, and the establishment of a republican governor, in place of the opposer of Cromwell’s power, Zulmiera, who was rapidly attaining the full burst of womanhood, was, at the earnest entreaties of Bridget Everard, who was charmed with the untutored graces of the beautiful Indian maiden, promoted to the office of her companion. It must be allowed, that this appointment met not with the full approval of the governor. Violently attached to Cromwell, and bearing bitter hatred to the royalist party, and all malignants, he thought the girl had been too long nurtured in their principles to make a faithful attendant to the daughter of a republican. But Bridget was his only child,—a motherless girl; and stern and unbending as he was to others, his iron mood gave way before her playful caresses. Still there was another and deep cause of dislike he had against Zulmiera. Upon further acquaintance with this Indian girl, he found her too haughty for his own arrogant spirit to deal with. Too high-minded and forgetful of her real rank as a servant, and apparently under the impression that, while attending upon her mistress, she was in fact her equal, if not her superior. Zulmiera was, in truth, fully alive to this sentiment. She looked upon herself as the descendant (on her mother’s side) of a long line of chiefs—of those who had once been rulers in the land, and who had received from their swarthy subjects the homage that monarchs of a more civilized nation were wont to receive. Thinking thus of Zulmiera, no wonder that the governor distrusted her. Nor was the girl ignorant of his opinion of her; and consequently their feelings of dislike were mutual. She knew he hated her; and he felt that in her heart she despised him. Still, she loved Bridget—for who could not love that mild, fair girl?— loved her with an intensity of fervour, unknown to the inhabitants of colder climes—and would have shed for her her heart’s best blood; for love and hatred were to Zulmiera all-absorbing passions. Yet there was another who held the _first_ place in Zulmiera’s heart,—one that was to the half-instructed, half-Indian girl—her “idol god.”