This overpowering dread of the future, of what might happen, which took possession of me, drove me to the decision of leaving home, as the best way of avoiding danger to my friends. Perhaps, too, if my physical health became better, I might gain strength enough to defy this infernal power; for, as I have said before, I possessed a singular consciousness that, if I could once successfully resist its promptings, my soul would be liberated from thraldom. I announced my determination of making a journey, without any explanation of my sudden change, and it was greeted with delight by my friends and relatives, who were anxious to hasten my departure while the humor was upon me; but they need not have feared any change of purpose on my part, for I was haunted by this terrible dread of the future, and I gladly said farewell for a time to my home and birthplace. The incidents of travel and of new scenes broke the monotony, and dispelled to some degree the gloom that had taken fast hold upon me. In a short period I found myself rapidly improving. Every week brought me an increase of strength, and I suffered less frequently from these frightful attacks. Although they occurred at longer intervals than formerly, they seemed to grow more severe in character; the conflict was fiercer, and my mind made a more desperate effort to gain the supremacy. My whole frame would be racked by the intense struggle which I constantly maintained, though I was constantly vanquished. The increasing delight I took in the scenery, the continued exercise and excitement, almost drove despair from me, and hope once more brightened my countenance. I began to look forward to the time when my health would be entirely restored, and my body and mind be in unison. I did not hope vainly, for the final conflict came, and with it a strange termination of my long sufferings. I stood upon the side of an Eastern mountain. Above my head vast rocks arose in solemn grandeur, their summits lost in canopied mists which, gray and clinging, wrapped them in obscurity. Below, a great chasm rent the mountain; a yawning, bottomless gulf. While I gazed, awed by the thought of its mysterious depths, where no human eye had seen, where no human foot had trod, a ray of light struggled in and rested on gaunt trees, on snake-like ferns, damp and cold, that clung to its slimy sides, and on one pale flower which nodded in the chill draught that came up, a palpable horror, from the blackness of darkness. I turned away. Near the western horizon dead clouds were piled one above another, and their heavy shadow lay brown and dark upon the sullen earth. No wind stirred the forests, or rustled their motionless leaves, and the awe of the unbroken silence fell, with a dread oppression, upon my heart.