English essays -- 18th century; Fiction; Short stories
I should have told my reader that this Indian had been formerly married
to one of the greatest beauties of his country, by whom he had several
children. This couple were so famous for their love and constancy to one
another that the Indians to this day, when they give a married man joy of
his wife, wish that they may live together like Marraton and Yaratilda.
Marraton had not stood long by the fisherman when he saw the shadow of
his beloved Yaratilda, who had for some time fixed her eye upon him
before he discovered her. Her arms were stretched out towards him;
floods of tears ran down her eyes; her looks, her hands, her voice called
him over to her, and, at the same time, seemed to tell him that the river
was unpassable. Who can describe the passion made up of joy, sorrow,
love, desire, astonishment that rose in the Indian upon the sight of his
dear Yaratilda? He could express it by nothing but his tears, which ran
like a river down his cheeks as he looked upon her. He had not stood in
this posture long before he plunged into the stream that lay before him,
and finding it to be nothing but the phantom of a river, stalked on the
bottom of it till he arose on the other side. At his approach Yaratilda
flew into his arms, whilst Marraton wished himself disencumbered of that
body which kept her from his embraces. After many questions and
endearments on both sides, she conducted him to a bower, which she had
dressed with her own hands with all the ornaments that could be met with
in those blooming regions. She had made it gay beyond imagination, and
was every day adding something new to it. As Marraton stood astonished
at the unspeakable beauty of her habitation, and ravished with the
fragrancy that came from every part of it, Yaratilda told him that she
was preparing this bower for his reception, as well knowing that his
piety to his God, and his faithful dealing towards men, would certainly
bring him to that happy place whenever his life should be at an end. She
then brought two of her children to him, who died some years before, and
resided with her in the same delightful bower, advising him to breed up
those others which were still with him in such a manner that they might
hereafter all of them meet together in this happy place.
The tradition tells us further that he had afterwards a sight of those
dismal habitations which are the portion of ill men after death; and
mentions several molten seas of gold, in which were plunged the souls of
barbarous Europeans, who put to the sword so many thousands of poor
Indians for the sake of that precious metal. But having already touched
upon the chief points of this tradition, and exceeded the measure of my
paper, I shall not give any further account of it.
SIX PAPERS ON WIT.
First Paper.
_Ut pictura poesis erit_--
HOR., _Ars Poet._ 361.
Poems like pictures are.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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