"My brother and myself alone survived of all our family. With the knowledge that our sister was really gone--swallowed up, doubtless, in the remorseless deep, into which she had darted in her delirium--we came to a full consciousness. Then, when it was only misery to know, we were permitted to know all, and to feel the whole terrible truth pressing upon us, that we were alone in that dreary world of sea. Not alone of our company; only of our people. Many there were who still kept in life, watchful but hopeless. We could see their dusky forms by the faint light of the stars, crouching along the slanting plane of the vessel, upon which, by cord, and sail, and spar, we still contrived to maintain foothold; and, anon, our company would lessen. The solemn silence of all things, except the dash of the waves against us, rolling up with murmurs, and breaking away in wrath, was interrupted only by a sullen plunge, ever and anon, into the engulphing deep, as the hope went out utterly in the heart of the victim, and he yielded to death, rather than prolong the wretched endurance of a life so full of misery. "Thus the night passed; not without other signs to cheer as well as startle us. Through the darkness we could see lights in the direction of the shore, as if borne by human hands. With the dawn of day, our eyes were turned eagerly in that direction. Nor did we look in vain. The shore swarmed with human forms. A hundred canoes were already darting along the margin of the great deep, and evident were the preparations of the people of this wild region, to visit our stranded vessel. In a little time they came. Their canoes were some of them large enough to carry forty warriors, though made from a single tree. They came to us in order of battle; a hundred boats, holding each from ten to fifty warriors. These carried spear and shield, huge lances, and well-curved bows, drawn with powerful sinews of the deer. Their arrows were long shafts of the feathery reed, such as flourish in all these forests. The feather from the eagle's wing gave it buoyancy, and the end of the shaft was barbed with a keen flint, wrought by art to an edge such as our best workmen give to steel. Many were the chief men among these warriors, who approached us in full panoply of barbaric pomp. Turbans of white and crimson-stained cotton, such as the Turk is shown to wear, though folded in a still nobler fashion, were wrapped about their heads, over which shook bunches of plumes taken from the paroquet, the crane, and the eagle. Robes of cotton, white, or crimson, or scarlet, colored with native dies of the forest, clothed their loins, and fell flowing from their shoulders; and, ever and anon, as they came, they shook a thousand gourds which they had made to rattle with little pebbles, which, with their huge drum, wrought of the mammoth gourd, and covered with raw deer skin, made a clamor most astounding to our hapless ears. Thus they