“The boatman dance, the boatman sing, The boatman up to every thing. When the boatman gets on shore, He spends his money and works for more. Dance, boatman, dance— Dance, boatman, dance—dance all night till broad daylight, And go home with the girls in the morning.” Steam was just beginning to be introduced, and the soothing solitudes of nature to be disturbed by the monotonous clank of machinery. Our party availed themselves of an upward-bound steamboat, and slowly ascended the Mississippi, whose turbid and swollen waters rolled far and wide beyond their usual boundaries. The river was filled with broken rafts, drift logs, and half-sunken and floating trees. The danger of running upon a snag, or encountering a sawyer, was great and impending. The current was so strong that their boat, although striving to keep in shore, would frequently be caught by a whirl or an eddy, and like a stray leaf upon a rivulet, would be turned round and round until striking against a tree, it would be sent into the mid current and again be carried for miles among the trees, from whose verdant tops the birds that had remained undisturbed by the rush and the roar beneath, flew at the boat’s approach, as if aware that their only enemy was man. They also ascended the Ohio, whose limpid waters, gliding with a strong but not impetuous current, have won for it the name of beautiful. When they stood upon the crest of the Alleghany, and saw mountains, “hills and plains as graceful in their sweep as the arrested billows of a mighty sea, and recollected that more boundless than the view, that verdant sweep is uninterrupted until the one extreme is locked in the fast embrace of thick-ribbed ice, and the other is washed by the phosphorescent ripple of the tropic, while on either side is heard the murmuring surge of a widespread and magnificent ocean,”[2] their hearts bounded with exultation as they thought of the unrivaled destinies of their country. As if on the high altar of the land of his nativity, Talbot, who had wandered far and wide, could not withhold his pledge of devotion, and the heartfelt exclamation escaped him, “By travel taught, I can attest I love my native land the best.” The commissioned officer, not unknown to fame, met with none of the obstacles which the friendless orphan had encountered, and Talbot’s estate was settled without difficulty. When the chastening hand of time had hallowed the memories of the dead, and substituted a Christian resignation for the bitterness of early grief, Edward and Mary were united, and through a since much checkered life, neither time nor circumstance, nor prosperity, nor distress, has for one instant abated a feeling which is fixed and unalterable as their future destinies. ----- [2] From a speech of the author’s, 1844. * * * * * THE RUSTIC SHRINE.