Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/316

 Two of his wives, one young and handsome, the other old and ugly, accompanied him into captivity. The old one waited on and tended him, and he seemed to love her most. He was always occupied by but one thought—the certain ruin of his people in that cold land where there was no light-wood. Embittered and silent, he wasted away by degrees, and died one month after his arrival at Fort Moultrie, died because he could not live. The light-wood in his life was consumed. A weeping willow droops over the white marble stone which covers his grave outside the wall of the fortress by the sea-shore.

It is a few years since he died, and his life, combat and death, are an abbreviated history of the fate of his nation in this part of the world. For this reason, and also for the sake of the expression of his handsome countenance, have I wished to make a sketch of his portrait, so that you may see it. I have heard him spoken of here by many persons. Otherwise, I have not just now a weakness for the Indians, notwithstanding their stern virtues, and beautiful characters, and the splendour with which novelists have loved to surround them. They are extremely cruel in their wars between the different tribes, and they are usually severe to the women, whom they treat as beasts of burden, and not as equals.

Casa Bianca, April 16th.—I now write to you, my sweet child, from a hermitage on the banks of the little river Pee Dee. It is a solitary, quiet abode, so solitary and quiet, that it almost astonishes me to find such a one in this lively active part of the world, and among these company-loving people.

A fine old couple, Mr. Poinsett and his lady, who remind me of Philemon and Baucis, live here quite alone, in the midst of negro slaves, rice-plantations, and wild, sandy, forest land. There is not a single white servant in the house. The overseer of the slaves, who always lives near the slave-hamlet, is the only white person