XXXIV.

"Protected by the divinity they adored, supported by the earth which they cultivated, and at peace with themselves, they enjoyed the sweets of life without dreading or desiring dissolution."-NuMA POMPILIUS.

"A pleasing land of drowsy head it was,

Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye."

Castle of Indolence.

In a country like our own, where everything is fresh and recent, and where nothing has yet been swept by the mellowing touch of departed time, any object which can lay but the most indifferent claim to antiquity fails not to be hailed with delighted attention. "You have," say they of the other hemisphere, "no ivy-mantled towers; no moss-grown, castellated ruins; no donjon-keeps rearing in dark sublimity their massive walls and age-bleached battlements; nothing to span the mighty chasm of bygone years, and to lead down the fancy into the shadowy realms of the past; and, therefore, your country is steril in moral interest." Now, though this corollary is undoubtedly false, I yet believe the proposition in the main to be true: especially is this the case with regard to that region which lies west of the Alleghany range. Little as there may be in the elder sections of our Atlantic states to demand veneration for the past, no sooner does the traveller find himself gliding along the silvery wave

of the "beautiful river," than at the same moment he finds himself forsaking all that the fairy creations of genius have ever consecrated, or the roll of the historian chronicled for coming time. All is NEW. The very soil on which he treads, fertile beyond comparison, and festering beneath the undisturbed vegetation of centuries; the rolling forests, bright, luxuriant, gorgeous as on the dawn of creation; the endless streams pouring onward in their fresh magnificence to the ocean, all seem new. The inhabitants are emigrants late from other lands, and every operation of human skill on which the eye may rest betrays a recent origin. There is but a single exception to these remarks-those mysterious monuments of a race whom we know not of!

In consideration, therefore, of the circumstance that antiquities in this blessed land of ours are, indeed, very few and far between, I deem it the serious duty of every traveller, be he virtuoso or be he not, whenever once so happy as to lay his grasp upon an antique" in any form, in any shape," just to hold fast to the best of his ability! Such, reader, be it known, was my own praiseworthy determination when drawing nigh to the eastern shore of the stream opposite the ancient French village Kaskaskia. The sun was going down, and as I approached the sandy edge of the sea-green water, a gay bevy of young folks were whirling the long, narrow, skiff-like ferry-boat like a bird across the stream, by means of a hawser to which it was attached, and which extended from shore to shore. In my own turn I stepped into the boat, and in a few moments the old French

negro had forced it half across the river, at this spot about three or four hundred yards in width. For one who has ever visited Kaskaskia in the last beautiful days of summer, a pen like my own need hardly be employed to delineate the loveliness of the scene which now opened upon the view. For miles the gleamy surface of the gentle Kaskaskia might be seen retreating from the eye, till lost at length in its windings through the forests of its banks, resting their deep shadows on the stream in all the calm magnificence of inanimate nature. The shore I was leaving swelled gracefully up from the water's edge, clothed in forests until it reached the bluffs, which towered abrupt and loftily; while here and there along the landscape the low roof of a log cabin. could be caught peeping forth from the dark shrub. bery. The bank of the stream I was approaching presented an aspect entirely the reverse; less lovely, but more picturesque. A low sandy beach stretched itself more than a mile along the river, destitute of trees, and rounding itself gently away into a broad green plain. Upon this plain-a portion of the American Bottom-at the distance of a few hundred yards from the water, is situated all that now remains of "old Kaskaskia." From the centre rises a tall Gothic spire, hoary with time, surmounted by an iron cross; and around this nucleus are clustered irregularly, at various intervals, the heavy-roofed, time-stained cottages of the French inhabitants. These houses are usually like those of the West Indian planters-but a single story in height-and the surface which they occupy is, VOL. II.-N

coed with mortar; othersboarded, etc., in modern s galleries in front, some of around the whole building, a enclosed by stone walls of these curious-looking structu the storm-winds of more tha circumstance which throws quated, venerable aspect to and which equally applies to of this peculiar people I hav city of Philadelphia and this Kaskaskia are, as regards ag but while every object which eye, looks fresh as if but yes last chiselling of the archit thoughts are carried back at Two centuries have rolled by Pilgrims" ceased to be a "cor you now look for a solitary re "State-street," the scene wh was first poured out by Br Cornhill;" the site of the "I wharf from which the tea was are indeed pointed out to you

in the history of the " Leaguer of Boston;" and yonder frowns the proud height of Bunker's Hill; there lay the British battle-ships, and there was "burning Charlestown:" but, with almost the solitary exception of the "Old South" Church, with the cannon-ball imbedded in its tower, where shall we look for an object around which our associations may cluster? This is not the case with these old villages. A century has looked down upon the same objects, in the same situations and under the same relations, with a change scarcely appreciable. Yon aged church-tower has thrown its venerable shadow alike over the Indian corn-dance, the rude cotillon of the French villager, the Spanish fandango, the Virginia reel, and the Yankee frolic. Thus, then, when I speak of these places with reference to antiquity, I refer not so much to the actual lapse of years as to the present aspect and age of the individual objects. In this view there are few spots in our country which may lay more undisputed claim to antiquity than these early French settlements in the Western Valley.

There is one feature of these little villages to which I have not at this time alluded, but which is equally amusing and characteristic, and which never fails to arrest the stranger's observation. I refer to the narrowness of those avenues intended for streets. It is no very strange thing that in aged Paris structure should be piled upon structure on 'either side even to the clouds, while hardly a footpath exists between; but that in this vast Western world a custom, in all respects the same, should have pre