5. V.
The chain of the Green mountains, after a gallop of
some five hundred miles, from Canada to Connecticut,
suddenly pulls up on the shore of Long-island sound,
and stands rearing with a bristling mane of pine-trees,
three hundred feet in air, as if checked in mid career
by the sea. Standing on the brink of this bold precipice,
you have the bald face of the rock in a sheer perpendicular
below you; and, spreading away from the
broken masses at its feet, lies an emerald meadow, inlaid
with a crystal and rambling river, across which,
at a distance of a mile or two, rise the spires of the
university, from what else were a thick-serried wilderness
of elms. Back from the edge of the precipice
extends a wild forest of hemlock and fir, ploughed on
its northern side by a mountain-torrent, whose bed of
marl, dry and overhung with trees in the summer, serve
as a path and a guide from the plain to the summit. It
were a toilsome ascent but for that smooth and hard
pavement, and the impervious and green thatch of
pine tassels overhung.
Antiquity in America extends no farther back than
the days of Cromwell, and East Rock is traditionary
ground with us—for there harbored the regicides
Whalley and Goffe, and many a breath-hushing tale
is told of them over the smouldering log-fires of Connecticut.
Not to rob the historian, I pass on to say
that this cavernous path to the mountain-top was the
resort in the holyday summer afternoons of most of the
poetical and otherwise well-disposed gentlemen sophomores,
and, on the day of which I speak, of Mrs. Ilfrington
and her seven-and-twenty lovely scholars. The
kind mistress ascended with the assistance of my arm,
and St. John drew stoutly between Miss Temple and
a fat young lady with an incipient asthma. Nunu had
not been seen since the first cluster of hanging flowers
had hidden her from our sight, as she bounded
upward.
The hour or two of slanting sunshine, poured in
upon the summit of the precipice from the west, had
been sufficient to induce a fine and silken moss to
show its fibres and small blossoms above the carpet of
pine-tassels; and emerging from the brown shadow of
the wood, you stood on a verdant platform, the foliage
of sighing trees overhead, a fairies' velvet beneath you,
and a view below that you may as well (if you would
not die in your ignorance) make a voyage over the
water to see.
We found Nunu lying thoughtfully near the brink
of the precipice, and gazing off over the waters of the
sound, as if she watched the coming or going of a
friend under the white sails that spotted its bosom.
We recovered our breath in silence, I alone, perhaps,
of that considerable company gazing with admiration
at the lithe and unconscious figure of grace lying in
the attitude of the Grecian Hermaphrodite on the brow
of the rock before us. Her eyes were moist and motionless
with abstraction, her lips just perceptibly
curved in an expression of mingled pride and sorrow,
her small hand buried and clinched in the moss, and
her left foot and ankle, models of spirited symmetry, escaped
carelessly from her dress, the high instep strained
back as if recovering from a leap, with the tense control
of emotion.
The game of the coquettish Georgian was well
played. With a true woman's pique, she had redoubled
her attentions to my friend from the moment
that she found it gave pain to another of her sex; and
St. John, like most men, seemed not unwilling to see
a new altar kindled to his vanity, though a heart he
had already won was stifling with the incense. Miss
Temple was very lovely. Her skin, of that teint of
opaque and patrican white which is found oftenest in
Asian latitudes, was just perceptibly warmed toward
the centre of the cheek with a glow like sunshine
through the thick white petal of a magnolia; her eyes
were hazel, with those inky lashes which enhance the
expression a thousand-fold, either of passion or melancholy;
her teeth were like strips from the lily's
heart; and she was clever, captivating, graceful, and a
thorough coquette. St. John was mysterious, romantic-looking,
superior, and, just now, the only victim in
the way. He admired, as all men do, those qualities
which, to her own sex, rendered the fair Isabella unamiable;
and yielded himself, as all men will, a satisfied
prey to enchantments of which he knew the
springs were the pique and vanity of the enchantress.
How singular it is that the highest and best qualities
of the female heart are those with which men are the
least captivated!
A rib of the mountain formed a natural seat a little
back from the pitch of the precipice, and here sat Miss
Temple, triumphant in drawing all eyes upon herself
and her tamed lion; her lap full of flowers, which he
had found time to gather on the way, and her white
hands employed in arranging a bouquet, of which the
destiny was yet a secret. Next to their own loves,
ladies like nothing on earth like mending or marring
the loves of others; and while the violets and already-drooping
wild flowers were coquettishly chosen or rejected
by those slender fingers, the sun might have
swung back to the east like a pendulum, and those
seven-and-twenty misses would have watched their
lovely schoolfellow the same. Nunu turned her head
slowly around at last, and silently looked on. St.
John lay at the feet of the Georgian, glancing from
the flowers to her face, and from her face to the flowers,
with an admiration not at all equivocal. Mrs.
Ilfrington sat apart, absorbed in finishing a sketch of
New-Haven; and I, interested painfully in watching
the emotions of the Cherokee, sat with my back to
the trunk of a hemlock—the only spectator who
comprehended the whole extent of the drama.
A wild rose was set in the heart of the bouquet at
last, a spear of riband-grass added to give it grace
and point, and nothing was wanting but a string. Reticules
were searched, pockets turned inside out, and
never a bit of riband to be found. The beauty was
in despair.
“Stay,” said St. John, springing to his feet.
“Lash! Lash!”
The dog came coursing in from the wood, and
crouched to his master's hand.
“Will a string of wampum do?” he asked, feeling
under the long hair on the dog's neck, and untying a
fine and variegated thread of many-colored beads,
worked exquisitely.
The dog growled, and Nunu sprang into the middle
of the circle with the fling of an adder, and seizing
the wampum as he handed it to her rival, called the
dog, and fastened it once more around his neck.
The ladies rose in alarm; the belle turned pale, and
clung to St. John's arm; the dog, with his hair bristling
upon his back, stood close to her feet in an attitude
of defiance; and the superb Indian, the peculiar
genius of her beauty developed by her indignation,
her nostrils expanded, and her eyes almost showering
fire in their flashes, stood before them like a young
Pythoness, ready to strike them dead with a regard.
St. John recovered from his astonishment after a
moment, and leaving the arm of Miss Temple, advanced
a step, and called to his dog.
The Cherokee patted the animal on his back, and
spoke to him in her own language; and, as St. John
still advanced, Nunu herself to her fullest height,
placed herself before the dog, who slunk growling
from his master, and said to him, as she folded her
arms, “The wampum is mine.”
St. John colored to the temples with shame.
“Lash!” he cried, stamping with his feet, and endeavoring
to fright him from his protectress.
The dog howled and crept away, half crouching
with fear, toward the precipice; and St. John shooting
suddenly past Nunu, seized him on the brink, and
held him down by the throat.
The next instant, a scream of horror from Mrs. Ilfrington,
followed by a terrific echo from every female
present, started the rude Kentuckian to his feet.
Clear over the abyss, hanging with one hand by an
ashen sapling, the point of her tiny foot just poising
on a projecting ledge of rock, swung the desperate
Cherokee, sustaining herself with perfect ease, but
with all the determination of her iron race collected
in calm concentration on her lips.
“Restore the wampum to his neck,” she cried, with
a voice that thrilled the very marrow with its subdued
fierceness, “or my blood rest on your soul!”
St. John flung it toward the dog, and clasped his
hands in silent horror.
The Cherokee bore down the sapling till its slender
stem cracked with the tension, and rising lightly with
the rebound, alit like a feather upon the rock. The
subdued student sprang to her side; but with scorn
on her lip, and the flush of exertion already vanishedfrom
her cheek, she called to the dog, and with rapid
strides took her way alone down the mountain.
