THE AMERICANS AND THE ABORIGINES. 313 



he seemed about to breathe his last ; his strength left 

 him, and it was only by the most laborious and pain- 

 ful efforts that the young girls got him over the rest 

 of the field. Panting and trembling, they at last 

 reached its extremity, and Rosa sank upon the 

 ground, incapable of further exertion. By a last 

 effort Canondah drew her burden out of the pal- 

 mettos, and then threw herself down by the side of 

 her friend. 



The last rays of the sun still played upon the sum- 

 mits of the loftier trees, of which the lower branches 

 Avere dimly seen in the rapidly thickening twilight, 

 when Rosa approached the Indian maiden, and with 

 the words, "The sun is low," roused her from her 

 state of exhaustion and semi-unconsciousness. Can- 

 ondah sprang to her feet, and the two girls tripped 

 side by side into the wood, until they at last paused 

 before an enormous cotton-tree. Several gigantic vines, 

 in whose powerful and enervating embrace the mighty 

 trunk had perished, still clasped the magnificent col- 

 ossus with their shining red tendrils, whilst the in- 

 terior of the tree, hollowed by the tooth of time, was 

 of a fantastical configuration not unlike a Gothic 

 chapel, and sufficiently spacious to contain twenty 

 men. The care with which the hollow had been 

 swept out, and the neighbourhood of a salt spring, 

 showed that it was used by the Indian hunters as 

 a resting-place and ambush. Canondah cautiously 

 approached the tree, and returned to Rosa with the 



