CROCODILE ISLAND. 11 



The man thus addressed remained motionless with surprise. 

 He never lifted his eyes from the deeply melancholy countenance 

 of the narrator ; and I must confess I listened with no little ear- 

 nestness to the disclosure he made myself. 



" At sixteen years of age,'' he said, " I found myself a denizen 

 of the wilds. Shaded from the summer heats, by magnificent 

 oaks of the primeval forest, where I lived; and secured from the 

 winter's cold, by skins of the tiger and lynx, I had not a desire 

 ungratified. Groves of orange trees spread themselves for hun- 

 dreds of miles along our river : cocoa nuts, and all the profusion 

 of fruits and flowers with which the Great Spirit saw fit to beautify 

 the original paradise of man, supplied every want. The eaglet's 

 feather in my hair, the embroidery of my wampum belt, pointed 

 out to my followers where their obedience was to be rendered : 

 and I felt myself prouder of their unhesitating submission, and 

 the love with which they regarded me, than that the blood of a 

 hundred kings flowed in my veins. I was Chief of the Chactaws 

 and Muscogulges. My mother was of European origin: her 

 grandfather had visited the then thinly populated regions of North 

 America, in company with several hundred bold and heroic spirits 

 like himself, whose aspirations for the independence and equality 

 of man, had carried them beyond the dull, cold letter of the law. 

 His name yet survives in Tipperary ; his boldness was the theme 

 of song ; and the twelve dastard mechanics, who, at the bidding 

 of a judge, consented to deprive their country of its ornament and 

 hero, and to banish him, with all the nobility of his nature fresh 

 upon him, were stigmatized as traitors to the cause of freedom. 

 In spite, however, of their cowardice and meanness, they could 

 not resist displaying the veneration in which they held him, by 

 entwining his wrists with massive belts ; and even around his legs 

 they suspended majestic iron chains, which rattled with surpass- 

 ing grandeur whenever he moved. He had not been long in the 

 new land to which his merits had thus transferred him, when his 

 name became as illustrious in it as it had been in his own. The 

 name of O'Flaherty is still, I understand, a word of fear to the 

 sleepy-eyed burghers of the law-oppressed towns . But his course 

 was as short as it was glorious. In leading a midnight attack on 

 the storehouse of some tyrannizing merchant, he was shot in the 

 act of breaking open a box which contained a vast quantity of 

 coin. He fell — and though he lived for several weeks, he kept his 

 teeth close upon the residence of his followers. He died as a hero 

 should die, calm, collected, fearless. Even when the cord with 



