A rough draft of a continuation or alternative version of the _Wanderings of Cain_ was found among Coleridge's papers. The greater portion of these fragmentary sheets was printed by the Editor, in the _Athenaeum_ of January 27, 1894, p. 114. The introduction of 'alligators' and an 'immense meadow' help to fix the date of _The Wanderings of Cain_. The imagery is derived from William Bartram's _Travels in Florida and Carolina_, which Coleridge and Wordsworth studied in 1798. Mr. Hutchinson, who reprints (_Lyrical Ballads of 1798_, Notes, pp. 259-60) a selected passage from the MS. fragment, points out 'that Coleridge had for a time thought of shaping the poem as a narrative addressed by Cain to his wife'. 'He falls down in a trance--when he awakes he sees a luminous body coming before him. It stands before him an orb of fire. It goes on, he moves not. It returns to him again, again retires as if wishing him to follow it. It then goes on and he follows: they are led to near the bottom of the wild woods, brooks, forests etc. etc. The Fire gradually shapes itself, retaining its luminous appearance, into the lineaments of a man. A dialogue between the fiery shape and Cain, in which the being presses upon him the enormity of his guilt and that he must make some expiation to the true deity, who is a severe God, and persuades him to burn out his eyes. Cain opposes this idea, and says that God himself who had inflicted this punishment upon him, had done it because he neglected to make a proper use of his senses, etc. The evil spirit answers him that God is indeed a God of mercy, and that an example must be given to mankind, that this end will be answered by his terrible appearance, at the same time he will be gratified with the most delicious sights and feelings. Cain, over-persuaded, consents to do it, but wishes to go to the top of the rocks to take a farewell of the earth. His farewell speech concluding with an abrupt address to the promised redeemer, and he abandons the idea on which the being had accompanied him, and turning round to declare this to the being he sees him dancing from rock to rock in his former shape down those interminable precipices. 'Child affeared by his father's ravings, goes out to pluck the fruits in the moonlight wildness. Cain's soliloquy. Child returns with a pitcher of water and a cake. Cain wonders what kind of beings dwell in that place--whether any created since man or whether this world had any beings rescued from the Chaos, wandering like shipwrecked beings from another world etc.