If all is silence and repose in the savannahs on the other side of the river, all here, on the contrary, is sound and motion; peckings against the trunks of the oaks, frictions of animals walking along as they nibble or crush between their teeth the stones of fruits, the roaring of the waves, plaintive cries, dull bellowings and mild cooings, fill these deserts with a tender yet wild harmony. But when a breeze happens to animate these solitudes, to swing these floating bodies, to confound these masses of white, blue, green, and pink, to mix all the colors and to combine all the murmurs, there issue such sounds from the depths of the forests, and such things pass before the eyes, that I should in vain endeavor to describe them to those who have never visited these primitive fields of Nature. After the discovery of the Mississippi by Father Marquette and the unfortunate La Salle, the first Frenchmen who established themselves at Biloxi and at New Orleans entered into an alliance with the Natchez, an Indian nation whose power was redoubtable in those countries. Quarrels and jealousies subsequently ensanguined the land of hospitality. Amongst these savages there was an old man named Chactas, * who, on account of his age, wisdom and knowledge of the affairs of life, was the patriarch and the beloved of the deserts. Like many other men, he had acquired virtue by calamity. Not only were the forests of the New World filled with his misfortunes, but he bore the tale of his calamities even to the shores of France. Kept at the galleys at Marseilles by a cruel act of injustice, restored to liberty, and presented to Louis XIV., he had conversed with the great men of that age, and had been present at the fêtes of Versailles, at the tragedies of Racine, and at the funeral orations of Bossuet: in one word, the savage had contemplated society at the moment of its greatest splendor. For several years Chactas, restored to the bosom of his country, had been in the enjoyment of repose. Nevertheless, Providence granted him even this favor dearly: the old man had become blind. A young girl used to accompany him on the hills of the Mississippi, just as Antigone formerly guided the steps of Odipus over the Cithæron, or as Malvina conducted Ossian over the rocks of Morven.