100 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH. 



town was situated, as near as the old histories of those days can 

 inform us, on one of the many islands that crowd the mouth of the 

 Apalachicola river. It is the more difficult to designate the spot, 

 because, from the currents of the river, new islands are formed 

 and the old ones are buried in the lapse of time, and the whole 

 character of the timber has been changed. Where now groves of 

 stunted pine surmount the sandy ridges, and the swamp poplar 

 and the rank titi cover the piles of driftwood that lodge on the 

 upper end of the islands, there formerly stood the life-oak, the 

 gum, the maple, and the pawpaw, while the deer grass beneath 

 was purple with its fragile flowers, and the blossoms of the running 

 gourds that the natives loved to cultivate. 



" Ortez was rowed in a canoe among many an island covered 

 with this rich vegetation, and dotted by the rush-thatched cottages 

 of the people. He saw stockade forts built of reeds frowning 

 down in mimic pomp on the waters that had never bristled with 

 more dangerous arms than the tomahawk and the arrow. He 

 heard the shrill sound of clarionets and horns, and saw waving 

 standards of gaudy feathers. The women that rowed the boat in 

 which he was bound were dressed in the simple robe that befitted 

 the summer land. Their linen, or sea-grass kilts, were trimmed 

 with feathers or furs, and sea-shells ornamented their hair and 

 ankles. Their olive-coloured limbs, unshackled by dress, were as 

 graceful in form as the children that played on the sand ; and the 

 men in the stern of the barge, though warriors, all had that gentle 

 manner and expression that belongs to the natives of southern 

 climes. / 



" On arriving at the village, the prisoner was led to the Indian 

 chief and his council, before the public lodge of the village. 

 There was short discussion as to the punishment, and no remarks 

 were made by the prisoner at the bar why sentence should not be 

 passed, for, in sooth, he could not say a word in any tongue they 

 could understand. An Indian communicated to him, by a symbolic 

 motion of shooting with an arrow, that his death was appointed ; 

 and then, pointing to the setting sun, and describing a semi-circle 

 with his hand, assigned the time for the morrow morning at sun- 

 rise. The prisoner was led away, little noting the laugh of the 



