THIRD JOURNET. 193 



attention, and that we had repea/edly seen the cayman. 

 It was useless to tarry here any longer ; moreover, the 

 coloured man began to take airs, and fancied that I could 

 not do without him. I never admit of this 



Discharges . . 



the man of in any expedition where I am commander ; 



and so I convinced the man, to his sorrow, 

 that I could do without him; for I paid him what I 

 had agreed to give him, which amounted to eight 

 dollars, and ordered him back in his own curial to 

 Mrs. Peterson's, on the hill at the first falls. I then 

 asked the negro if there were any Indian settlements 

 in the neighbourhood j he said he knew of one, a day 

 and a half off. We went in quest of it, and about one 

 o'clock the next day the negro showed us the creek 

 where it was. 



The entrance was so concealed by thick bushes, that 

 Reaches a ^ stranger would have passed it without 

 Indian set^ knowing it to be a creek. In going up it we 

 tiement. found it dark, winding, and intricate beyond 

 any creek that I had ever seen before. When Orpheus 

 came back with his young wife from Styx, his path must 

 have been similar to this ; for Ovid says it was 



" Arduus, obliquus, caligine densus opaca;'' 



and this creek was exactly so. 



When we had got about two-thirds up it, we met the 

 Indians going a-fishing. I saw, by the way their things 

 were packed in the curial, that they did not intend to 

 return for some days. However, on telling them what 

 we wanted, and by promising handsome presents of 

 powder, shot, and hooks, they dropped their expedition, 

 and invited us up to the settlement they had just left^ 

 and where we laid in a provision of cassava. 



o 



