Saved. 



227 



comes — his heart flutters, his sight is dimmed, his brain 

 reels, he gasps for breath 1 It comes — it has run upon 

 the beach, and the lost one is found. 



" This is no tale of fiction, but the relation of an act- 

 ual occurrence, which might be embellished, no doubt, but 

 which is better in the plain garb of truth. The notes by 

 which I recorded it were written in the cabin of the once 

 lost * live oaker,' about four years after the painful inci- 

 dent occurred. His amiable wife and loving children 

 were present at the recital, and never shall I forget the 

 tears that flowed from them as they listened to it, albeit it 

 had long been more familiar to them than a tale thrice 

 told. It only remains for me to say that the distance be- 

 tween the cabin and the live oak hummock to which the 

 woodsman was bound scarcely exceeded eight miles, 

 while the part of the river at which he was found was 

 thirty-eight miles from his house. Calculating his daily 

 wanderings at ten miles, we may believe that they 

 amounted in all to four hundred. He must therefore 

 have rambled in a circuitous direction, which people gen- 

 erally do in such circumstances. Nothing but the great 

 strength of his constitution and the merciful aid of his 

 Maker could have supported him for so long a time." 



