248 THE ILLINOIS. [1764. 



Yet this western paradise is not free from the 

 primal curse. The beneficent sun, which kindles 

 into life so many forms of loveliness and beauty, 

 fails not to engender venom and death from the 

 rank slime of pestilential swamp and marsh. In 

 some stagnant pool, buried in the jungle-like 

 depths of the forest, where the hot and lifeless 

 water reeks with exhalations, the water-snake 

 basks by the margin, or winds his checkered 

 length of loathsome beauty across the sleepy sur- 

 face. From beneath the rotten carcass of some 

 fallen tree, the moccason thrusts out his broad flat 

 head, ready to dart on the intruder. On the dry, 

 sun-scorched prairie, the rattlesnake, a more gen- 

 erous enemy, reposes in his spiral coil. He scorns 

 to shun the eye of day, as if conscious of the 

 honor accorded to his name by the warlike race, 

 who, jointly with him, claim lordship over the 

 land.^ But some intrusive footstep awakes him 



1 The superstitious veneration wliich the Indians entertain for the 

 rattlesnake has been before alluded to. The Cherokees christened him 

 by a name which, being interpreted, signifies the bright old inhabitants, a 

 title of affectionate admiration of which his less partial acquaintance 

 would hardly judge him worthy. 



" Between the heads of the northern branch of the Lower Cheerake 

 River, and the heads of that of Tuckaschchee, winding round in a long 

 course by the late Fort Loudon, and afterwards into the Mississippi, there 

 is, both in the nature and circumstances, a great phenomenon. Between 

 two high mountains, nearly covered with old mossy rocks, lofty cedars 

 and pines, in the valleys of which the beams of the sun reflect a powerful 

 heat, there are, as the natives affirm, some bright old inhabitants, or 

 rattlesnakes, of a more enormous size than is mentioned in history. 

 They are so large and unwieldy, that they take a circle almost as wide 

 as their length, to crawl round in their shortest orbit ; but bountiful 

 nature compensates the heavy motion of their bodies ; for, as they say, 

 no living creature moves within the reach of their sight, but they can 

 draw it to them ; which is agreeable to what we observe through the 



