266 ♦ WILD SPOETS nr the south. 



slightly made, with a sullen, stolid face, that seemed in 

 repose to be without intelligence, but which brightened 

 into intensity when animated. Halleck Tustenuggee's 

 favorite camp was located on the upper waters of the 

 Ouithlacouchee Kiver, on a live-oak island that reared 

 itself the only stable land amid leagues of morass. Here 

 were erected neatly thatched cabins, and store-houses of 

 food and ammunition, and here, guarded by the solitude, 

 the quicksand, the tortuous lagoons, and the scaly reptiles 

 of the swamj), were always to be found a merry company 

 of little swarthy imps that played in the grass, and sober 

 women that sat all the while with their blankets wrapped 

 around them, as still as the dead monks in the Piazza 

 Borgonona. 



No white man, it might be said without a word of 

 exaggeration, had ever seen this island ; therefore, a per- 

 fect descrij)tion cannot reasonably be required, and any 

 criticism on the description, as given, will lack proof to 

 make it effective. The buzzard alone, from his slow 

 circles in the zenith, had marked the camp smoke, under 

 the long-hanging moss. Only the panther, from the 

 labyrmth of the magnolias, or the alligator under the 

 fallen trees, heard the children's laugh, or the squaw's 

 song to her swart pappoose. So the stores of maize and 

 powder were never burned by the enemy, and the dried 

 and wrinkled scalps that hung to the tent-poles, some by 

 their silken tresses and some by their short grey curls, 

 continued to smoke and dry in the fire-light and the sun- 

 shine, unreclaimed and unavenged. 



