The robes of the Queen herself were ample. The skirts of her dress fell below her knees, a thing very uncommon with the women of Florida. Over this, she wore a tunic of crimson, which descended below her hips. A slight cincture embraced, without confining, her waist. Long strings of sea-shell, of the smallest size, but of colors and tints the most various and delicate, drooped across her shoulders, and were strung, in loops and droplets, to the skirts of her dress and her symar. Similar strings encircled her head, from which the hair hung free behind, almost to the ground, a raven-like stream, of the deepest and most glossy sable. Her form was equally stately and graceful--her carriage betrayed a freedom, which was at once native and the fruit of habitual exercise. Nothing could have been more gracious than the sweetness of her welcome; nothing more utterly unshadowed than the sunshine which beamed in her countenance. She led her guests among the crowd, and soon released La Vasseur to one of the loveliest girls who came about her. Alphonse D'Erlach she kept to herself. She was evidently struck with the singular union of delicacy and youth with sagacity and character, which declared itself in his features and deportment. Very soon were all the parties engaged in the mazes of the Indian dance of Iracana,--a movement which, unlike the waltz of the Spaniards, less stately perhaps, and less imposing--yet requires all its flexibility and freedom, and possesses all its seductive and voluptuous attractions. Half the night was consumed with dancing; then gay parties could be seen gliding into canoes and darting across the stream to other villages and places of abode. Anon, might be perceived a silent couple gliding away to sacred thickets; and with the sound of a mighty conch, which strangely broke the silence of the forest, the Queen herself retired with her attendants, having first assigned to certain of her chiefs the task of providing for the Frenchmen. Of these she had already shown herself sufficiently heedful and solicitous. Not sparing of her regards to La Vasseur, she had particularly devoted herself to D'Erlach, and, while they danced together, if the truth could be spoken of her simple heart, great had been its pleasure at those moments, when the spirit of the dance required that she should yield herself to his grasp, and die away languidly in his embrace. "Ah! handsome Frenchman," she said to her companion,--"You please me so much."