The wigwam of Kaf-ne-wah-go--His family--Tula, his only daughter--O-ken-áh-ga, her husband--The Athapuscows steal in at night--The chiefs murdered--Tula a captive--Her infant boy murdered before her eyes--The Chippeways in pursuit of the murderers--Following the trail--The enemy overtaken--Retribution wreaked upon the innocent--The deep grief of Tula--Her weary marches--Her captors encamp--The tempest--She escapes in the darkness--Vain attempts to discover her retreat--Seeks to find her way back to her people--The forest--A midnight intruder--She climbs a tree--Is besieged--Assaulted--Repels and destroys the enemy--Intricacies and dangers of the forest--An opening, but no light--Bewildered--Resolves to go no farther--Finds a convenient spot--builds a cabin--her house-keeping--Her ingenuity, industry and taste--The Hermitess discovered--Her solitude reluctantly abandoned--Indian mode of obtaining a wife--Journeyings--A new party--An unexpected meeting. THE AZTEC PRINCESS, OR DESTINY FORESHADOWED. Rapacious Spain Followed her bold discoverer o'er the main; A rabid race, fanatically bold, And steeled to cruelty by lust of gold, Traversed the waves, the unknown world explored, The cross their standard, but their path the sword; Their steps were graves; o'er prostrate realms they trod, They worshipped Mammon, while they vowed to God. THE AZTEC PRINCESS. CHAPTER I. BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF TECUICHPO. ~Tell me, ascribest thou influence to the stars?~ "Wo! wo! wo! to the imperial House of Tenochtitlan! Never saw I the heavens in so inauspicious an aspect. Dark portentous influences appear on every side. May the horoscope of the infant daughter of Montezuma never be fulfilled." These were the awful words of the priestly astrologer of Tenochtitlan, uttered with solemn and oracular emphasis from the lofty Teocalli, where he had been long and studiously watching the heavens, and calculating the relative positions and combinations of the stars. A deep unutterable gloom seemed to pervade his soul. Several times he traversed the broad terrace, in a terrible agitation; his splendid pontifical robes flowing loosely in the breeze, and his tall majestic figure relieved against the clear sky, like some colossal moving statue,--and then, in tones of deeper grief than before, finding no error in his calculations, reiterated his oracular curse--"Wo! wo! wo! to the imperial House of Tenochtitlan!" Casting down his instruments to the earth, and tearing his hair in the violence of his emotions, he prostrated himself on the altar, and poured forth a loud and earnest prayer to all his gods.