THE FLORIDA POCAHONTAS. 105 



insignia of woe, beating of drums, formed of the sections of hollow 

 trees covered with deer skins, and the mournful blast of their 

 conch-shell trumpets. 



" Wealuste, the great black water chief, had been killed, and 

 they placed him on the shore, with his arrows and his quiver, his 

 knife and his eagles' plumes, and a goodly store of chinquapin nuts 

 and maize, to support him on that long journey to the Happy 

 Hunting-ground that he was to make in darkness and alone. His 

 body was sewed in deerskins, pictured with the scenes of his life, 

 and then placed in a wooden canoe formed from a cypress log. 

 This canoe was fixed on upright posts, and the warrior was left to 

 iloat away, as a chief should go, to the silent realm. But for forty 

 days and forty nights, or for one whole moon, the corpse was to 

 be watched by comrades of equal rank with the deceased, so that 

 neither beast nor bird disturbed the dead. This is a part of the 

 simple faith of the tribe; and they affirm that after decay has 

 taken the body, the departed chief is safe beyond earthly harm. 



"Ortez was the first in order that had assigned to him this 

 honourable duty, and in the early part of a summer eve he took his 

 post by the dead man. The sun laid down in his golden bed in 

 the western waters, and the stars one by one stepped to their 

 places in the sky, as the watcher paced to and fro by the side of 

 the scaffolding where the dead chief slept. He heard the distant 

 wailing of music from the village, and the nearer hooting of the 

 owls, and the honking of the herons from the wood. He saw the 

 pawpaw wave its purple bells between him and the sky, and the 

 green balls of the buttonwood looked like the olives on the hills 

 of his native land. But it was not of the storied peaks of Spain 

 the soldier was then thinking — nor was he listening to the twitter- 

 ing of the birds in the reeds. He was watching the path that led 

 toward the village, and his heart was beating thick with the 

 anticipation of meeting some one that was fairer than the pawpaw 

 bell, and dearer than the towers of his native town. He listens 

 on his beat with one foot raised — he turns his ear aside, and his 

 thin nostril quivers like that of a horse. He hears a splash in the 

 water — it was not the grey duck. A canoe touches the shore, and 

 a girl steps out on the strand. Her luminous eye is half veiled 



