CHOCORUA'S CURSE.
BY MRS. CHILD.

THE rocky county of Stafford, New Hampshire, is remarkable for its wild and broken scenery. Ranges of hills towering one above another, as if eager to look upon the beautiful country, which afar off lies sleeping in the embrace of heaven; precipices, from which the young eagles take their flight to the sun; dells rugged and tangled as the dominions of Roderick Vich Alpine, and ravines dark and deep enough for the death scene of a bandit, form the magnificent characteristics of this picturesque region.

A high precipice, called Chocorua's Cliff, is rendered peculiarly interesting by a legend which tradition has scarcely saved from utter oblivion. Had it been in Scotland, perhaps the genius of Sir Walter would have hallowed it, and Americans would have crowded there to kindle fancy on the altar of memory. Being in the midst of our own romantic scenery, it is little known, and less visited; for the vicinity is as yet untraversed by rail-roads or canals, and no "Mountain House," perched on these tremendous battlements, allures the traveller hither to mock the majesty of nature

VOL. I.

with the insipidities of fashion. Our distinguished artist, Mr. Cole, found the sunshine and the winds sleeping upon it in solitude and secresy; and his pencil has brought it before us in its stern repose.

In olden time, when Goffe and Whalley passed for wizards and mountain spirits among the superstitious, the vicinity of the spot we have been describing was occupied by a very small colony, which, either from discontent or enterprise, had retired into this remote part of New Hampshire. Most of them were ordinary men, led to this independent mode of life from an impatience of restraint, which as frequently accompanies vulgar obstinacy as generous pride. But there was one master spirit among them, who was capable of a higher destiny than he ever fulfilled. The consciousness of this had stamped something of proud humility on the face of Cornelius Campbell; something of a haughty spirit strongly curbed by circumstances he could not control, and at which he scorned to murmur. He assumed no superiority; but unconsciously he threw around him the spell of intellect, and his com- . panions felt, they knew not why, that he was among them but not of them," His stature was gigantic, and he had the bold, quick tread

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of one who had wandered frequently and fearlessly among the terrible hiding-places of nature. His voice was harsh, but his whole countenance possessed singular capabilities for tenderness of expression; and sometimes, under the gentle influence of domestic excitement, his hard features would be rapidly lighted up, seeming like the sunshine flying over the shaded fields in an April day.

His companion was one peculiarly calculated to excite and retain the deep, strong energies of manly love. She had possessed extraordinary beauty; and had, in the full maturity of an excellent judgment, relinquished several splendid alliances, and incurred her father's displeasure, for the sake of Cornelius Campbell. Had political circumstances proved favourable, his talents and ambition would unquestionably have worked out a path to emolu-. ment and fame; but he had been a zealous and active enemy of the Stuarts, and the restoration of Charles the Second was the deathwarrant of his hopes. Immediate flight became necessary, and America was the chosen place of refuge. His adherence to Cromwell's party was not occasioned by religious sympathy, but by political views, too liberal and philosophical for the state of the people; therefore Cornelius Campbell was no favourite with our forefathers, and being of a proud nature, he withdrew with his family to the solitary place we have mentioned.

It seemed a hard fate for one who had from childhood been accustomed to-indulgence and admiration, yet Mrs. Campbell enjoyed more than she had done in her days of splendour; so much deeper are the sources of happiness than those of gaiety. Even her face had suffered little from time and hardship. The bloom on her cheek, which in youth had been like the sweet-pea blossom, that most feminine of all flowers, had, it is true, somewhat faded; but her rich, intellectual expression did but receive additional majesty from years; and the exercise of quiet domestic love, which, where it is suffered to exist, always deepens and brightens with time, had given a bland and placid expression, which might well have atoned for the absence of more striking beauty. To such a woman as Caroline Campbell, of what use would have been some modern doctrines of equality and independence?

With a mind sufficiently cultivated to appreciate and enjoy her husband's intellectual energies, she had a heart that could not have found another home. The bird will drop into its nest though the treasures of earth and sky are open. To have proved marriage a tyranny, and the cares of domestic life a thraldom, would have affected Caroline Campbell as little, as to be told that the pure, sweet atmosphere she breathed, was pressing upon her so many pounds to every square inch! Over such a heart, and such a soul, external circumstances have little power; all worldly in

terest was concentrated in her husband and babes, and her spirit was satisfied with that inexhaustible fountain of joy which nature gives, and God has blessed.

A very small settlement, in such a remote place, was of course subject to inconvenience and occasional suffering. From the Indians they received neither injury nor insult. No cause of quarrel had ever arisen; and, although their frequent visits were sometimes troublesome, they never had given indications of jealousy or malice. Chocorua was a prophet among them, and as such an object of peculiar respect. He had a mind which education and motive would have nerved with giant strength; but growing up in savage freedom, it wasted itself in dark, fierce, ungovernable passions. There was something fearful in the quiet haughtiness of his lip-it seemed so like slumbering power, too proud to be lightly roused and too implacable to sleep again. In his small, black, fiery eye, expression lay coiled up like a beautiful snake. The white people knew that his hatred would be terrible; but they had never provoked it, and even the children became too much accustomed to him to fear him.

Chocorua had a son, about nine or ten years old, to whom Caroline Campbell had occasionally made such gaudy presents as were likely to attract his savage fancy. This won the child's affections, so that he became a familiar visitant, almost an inmate of their dwelling; and being unrestrained by the courtesies of civilized life, he would inspect everything and taste of everything which came in his way. Some poison, prepared for a mischievous fox, which had long troubled the little settlement, was discovered and drunk by the Indian boy; and he went home to his father to sicken and die. From that moment jealousy and hatred took possession of Chocorua's soul. He never told his suspicions-he brooded over them in secret, to nourish the deadly revenge he contemplated against Cornelius Campbell.

The story of Indian animosity is always the

same.

Cornelius Campbell left his hut for the fields early one bright, balmy morning in June. Still a lover, though ten years a husband, his last look was turned towards his wife, answering her parting smile-his last action a kiss for each of his children. When he returned to dinner, they were dead-all dead! and their disfigured bodies too cruelly showed that an Indian's hand had done the work!

In such a mind grief, like all other emotions, was tempestuous. Home had been to him the only verdant spot in the wide desert of life. In his wife and children he had garnered up all his heart; and now they were torn from him, the remembrance of their love clung to him like the death-grapple of a drowning man, sinking him down, down, into darkness and death. This was followed by a calm a thousand times more terrible-the creeping agony of

despair, that brings with it no power of resist

ance.

"It was as if the dead could feel

The icy worm around him steal." Such, for many days was the state of Cornelius Campbell. Those who knew and reverenced him, feared that the spark of reason was for ever extinguished. But it rekindled again, and with it came a wild demoniac spirit of revenge. The death-groan of Chocorua would make him smile in his dreams; and when he waked, death seemed too pitiful a vengeance for the anguish that was eating into his very soul.

Chocorua's brethren were absent on a hunting expedition at the time he committed the murder; and those who watched his movements observed that he frequently climbed the high precipice, which afterward took his name, probably looking out for indications of their return.

Here Cornelius Campbell resolved to effect his deadly purpose. A party was formed under his guidance, to cut off all chance of retreat, and the dark-minded prophet was to be hunted like a wild beast to his lair.

The morning sun had scarce cleared away the fogs when Chocorua started at a loud voice from beneath the precipice, commanding him to throw himself into the deep abyss below. He knew the voice of his enemy, and replied with an Indian's calmness. "The Great Spirit gave life to Chocorua; and Chocorua will not throw it away at the command of a white man." "Then hear the Great Spirit speak in the white man's thunder!" exclaimed Cornelius Campbell, as he pointed his gun to the precipice. Chocorua, though fierce and fearless as a panther, had never overcome his dread of fire-arms. He placed his hand upon his ears to shut out the stunning report; the next moment the blood bubbled from his neck, and he reeled fearfully on the edge of the precipice. But he recovered himself, and, raising himself on his hands, he spoke in a loud voice, that grew more terrific as its huskiness increased. "A curse upon ye, white men! May the Great Spirit curse ye when he speaks in the clouds, and his words are fire! Chocorua had a son- and ye killed him while the sky looked bright! Lightning blast your crops! Wind and fire destroy your dwellings! The Evil Spirit breathe death upon your cattle! Your graves lie in the war path of the Indian! Panthers howl, and wolves fatten over your bones! Chocorua goes to the Great Spirit -his curse stays with the white men!"

The prophet sunk upon the ground, still uttering inaudible curses-and they left his bones to whiten in the sun. But his curse rested on the settlement. The tomahawk and scalping knife were busy among them, the winds tore up trees and hurled them at their dwellings, their crops were blasted, their cattle died, and sickness came upon their strongest

men. At last the remnant of them departed from the fatal spot to mingle with more populous and prosperous colonies. Cornelius Campbell became a hermit, seldom seeking or seeing his fellow men; and two years after he was found dead in his hut.

To this day the town of Burton, in New Hampshire, is remarkable for a pestilence which infects its cattle; and the superstitious think that Chocorua's spirit still sits enthroned upon his precipice, breathing a curse upon them.

THE CROCUS'S SOLILOQUY.
BY MISS H. F. GOULD.
Down in my solitude under the snow,
Where nothing cheering can reach me ;
Here, without light to see how to grow,
I'll trust to nature to teach me.

I will not despair, nor be idle, nor frown,
Locked in so gloomy a dwelling;

My leaves shall run up, and my roots shall run down,

While the bud in my bosom is swelling. Soon as the frost will get out of my bed,

From this cold dungeon to free me,

I will peer up with my little bright head;
All will be joyful to see me.

Then from my heart will young petals diverge,
As rays of the sun from their focus;

I from the darkness of earth will emerge
A happy and beautiful Crocus!
Gaily arrayed in my yellow and green,
When to their view I have risen,
Will they not wonder how one so serene
Came from so dismal a prison?
Many, perhaps, from so simple a flower
This little lesson may borrow--
Patient to-day, through its gloomiest hour,
We come out the brighter to-morrow!

EXTRACTS FROM A SEA BOOK. BY SAMUEL HAZZARD. THE "Seabird" was under weigh. As I went on deck she was lying, with her canvass spread to court the salutations of the rising breeze, midway between Governor's and Staten Island. At that moment our sails hung listlessly against the masts, and the exhalations that curled upon the waters rose perpendicularly to the upper regions of the air. Soon, however, they began to flutter and chafe with the rigging as if impatient at the tardy movements of the wind, till, as it came murmuring from the Jersey shore, mist and ripples and ships were moving swiftly towards a point, which, in the dimness of the hour, seemed the opening into another world. We soon reached it, and the perilous scene of our future labours opened before us.

I turned to look for the lighthouse. It had disappeared; and the vessels in whose company we had sailed were scattered, like a

frighted flock, towards every corner of heaven. The breeze freshened; we were shaping our solitary course for Turk's Island. The highlands of Neversink, the last land seen on leaving the coast, formed but a small arc in the immense horizon, and, at length, the beams of the setting sun lighted on nothing but our own little vessel and the blue waters that rolled around us.

"And now," thought I, "I am in the world alone upon the wide, wide sea.'

"We have every prospect of a favourable passage," said a voice near me; and for the first time since I embarked I recollected that I was not the only passenger on board. The speaker was a venerable gentleman of some three score years, with silver locks and a countenance expressive of amiable feelings, though careworn and melancholy. On his arm leaned a small and extremely graceful female figure, to whom his remark had been addressed, and both were gazing in the direction where the waters were still flashing with the living splendours of the sunset.

“Beautiful!” at length exclaimed the lady, without seeming to heed what the other had said. "How lovely is this scene, my dear father. And see, what a beautiful cloud! Does it not remind you of Magawisca's 'isles of the sweet southwest?""

Who has not felt the magic of a voice? I had not seen the speaker, and yet her tones came over me like a pleasant music.

"You are the child of imagination, my dear Mary," said her father, affectionately, passing his arm round her waist; "would to Heaven you were less so."

"But," said she, in a mournful tone," I do not always indulge in gay fancies."

"True, my dear; your feelings change their hues as often and as suddenly as the Iclouds of heaven. See yonder; your enchanted island has already lost its golden mantle, and now lies brooding on the breast of the sea a dusky and threatening bank of fog. You will now as easily people it with the demons of the storm, as when gilded by the sunbeams with the spirits of the blest. Thus suddenly do you pass from the brightest dreams of happiness to the darkest forebodings. I repeat, would to Heaven you were less the child of imagination! You had been happier.

The father, in alluding to her constitutional weakness, had probably awakened distressing recollections; for she hung her head and withdrew from his arm, and when I approached to get a view of her face, her eyes were filled with tears. She turned away quickly on seeing a stranger. But that view was enough. I have spoken of the magic of a voice, but what is it to the human face?

"You seem interested with the singular deportment of my daughter," observed the old gentleman as she retired.

I started, I believe in some confusion.

"She has just risen from a bed of sickness," he continued, with a melancholy accent; "and I am fearful will never be herself again."

"If I were to judge of her malady from her appearance," said I, "I should say that the mind has had more to do than bodily infirmities with the ruin which has been wrought in that lovely countenance."

"You are right, Sir," replied he, with a sigh—“ her illness was occasioned by mental anguish, the cause of which is buried deep in both our hearts. Suffice it to say that the victim of intemperance seldom falls, alone; and that when a youth of high promise immolates himself on the altar of the disgusting fiend, tears and broken hearts attend the sacrifice."

The old man spoke with mournful energy, and I pitied him. "Is there no hope of the reformation of such an one?" I enquired.

"In this case none. It is more than six months since William Ashton fled from society and went to sea as a common mariner. The presence, the devoted affection, the tears of my child could not reclaim him-what then can?"

"What, indeed!" repeated I.

"And this

voyage is undertaken for the recovery of her health? You will excuse my inquisitiveness," I immediately added, "I have lived long enough in your country to acquire her characteristic mode of questioning."

"I hold it every man's duty as well as interest," said he, "whose lot it is to travel on the great deep, far from his home and kindred, to relate so much of his own history as shall entitle him to the sympathy and confidence of the companions of his voyage. am a Scotchman, and my name is Douglas." My name," said I, "is Brae, and I am a Freshman in College; you have my whole history."

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The shadows of night had settled over the solitary waste before we parted for the night. Many leagues of sea had been ploughed in that short period, as the ship, yielding to the impulse of the powerful breeze, dashed on her way over the billows. Three days of this propitious wind brought us off "the Hatteras," and though at the distance of three hundred miles from land, we received the usual greeting of the Cape, and were obliged to do homage to its strong spirit, under bare poles, for several hours.

It will be supposed by those of my readers who will have the charity to consider me a man of taste, that during these three days I had not avoided the society of Mary Douglas and her father. If I may so speak without being misunderstood, or expressing my meaning too strongly, I had become quite a favourite. I found her mind all that her countenance had promised. Her sufferings had been cruel; sufficiently severe, indeed,

to cause a temporary alienation of her reason, but its only remaining trace was an occasional wildness of the eye and an imagination highly and sometime painfully susceptible of excitement. In her moments of animation it was delightful to stand by her side, leaning on the tafferel, and behold the world of romance her playful fancy would call up above and around us. Each golden cloud, touched by the magic of her tongue, floated in the element a fairy palace of aerial spirits. The ocean and everything visible on its surface, the finny herds that glided through its depths, were all made to assist in supporting, and adorning, and peopling her ideal world.

"See," she exclaimed pointing with her delicate finger to one of those curious marine animals called the "Portuguese man of war," "yonder is a bark fit for the flag ship of Queen Mab's high admiral."

"Her majesty has a squadron on the waters this morning," said I, "for yonder come a dozen more." The beautiful creatures, who have been taught by nature a noble art which the pride of man would arrogate to himself, with their bodies low in the water like a deep freighted ship, and their purple sails distended with air like a balloon, passed us slowly and gracefully, most gallantly bearing up into the wind. "You have extended the fairy queen's dominion," continued I; "I never suspected before that she made any pretensions to the empire of Neptune."

"And why not?" she quickly replied. "Why should every green grove and hill side be trodden by myriads of invisible and tiny sprites, and fancy refuse her aid to people these blue depths? There are fairies on land," she continued, smiling, "and fairies I am determined there shall be at sea.

"You have only to wave your wand, enchantress," said I in her own vein, "and we shall see not only their mimic fleets, but Queen Mab

herself, and her whole corps de ballet,' dancing on the crest of every wave."

Her father was happy to see her possess even the shadow of enjoyment. "You will not have many days to revel in these watery realms of fairy land," said he, "if we go on at this rate."

The propitious and powerful breeze that had brought us out of port, and which had, temporarily, been put to the rout by a counter and more violent gust from the Hatteras, had now revived, and came sweeping from the northeast in a steady gale. Swift flew the "Seabird" on her snowy wing, dashing recklessly through the exulting elements, as if anxious to redeem the time that had been lost in port. It is a phenomenon which I have never heard satisfactorily explained," observed Mr. Douglas, "that some parts of the ocean should be subject to the almost perpetual dominion of the tempest, and others be as remarkable for their calmness. Now this part, which we

are leaving so rapidly, is styled by mariners the stormy latitudes; and justly; for I have made more than six voyages between the West Indies and New York, and never did I pass the shores of America between the latitudes of thirty-five and thirty degrees, without experiencing more or less bad weather."

"Captain Ben. Starboard, that I made my first voyage under," said the captain, in his broad, heavy way, "used to call this part of the sea, the kingdom of thunder and lightning; and right enough, as Mr. Douglas says; for I believe the surly gentleman who has his moorings on the shoals of the Cape, but who often takes a cruise as far as Bermuda, burns more of heaven's gunpowder than any other man along shore."

"If you want to see thunder works in real style," said a grim old seaman at the helm, though to say the truth I've seen it crack and blaze a couple of degrees to the leeward in a manner to make a man think his ship engaged with a first rate; but if you want to see it in what I call real sea style, you must haul upon this wind till you cross the ocean, then take a sheer through the straits till you find a piece of water called the Gulf of Lyons. There, in a squall, the clouds hang so low and heavy that you can't tell whether the fire comes out of the heavens, or the waters; and the thunder sounds for all the world as if father Neptune and all his regiment of sea-born devils, had clapped their heads above the water, and were giving you your last hail into etern—'

"Mind your hel-um, old Jack Cable," said the captain, sternly, breaking the old tar's figure in two.

Still blew our brave northeaster. "Don't you call this the regular trade wind?" asked Mr. Douglas.

"You never take the trades north of twentyseven or eight," replied the captain, "and we are just passing Bermuda."

But, trades or not, certain it is that this fine eight knot breeze lasted from the twenty-fifth of April to the first of May; and carried us from the latitude of Cape Charles past the boisterous realm of Hatteras, through the calm and weedy waters that lave the northern shores of the great Bahama chain, into that beautiful strait on one side of which rise the cloud-clapped summits of St. Domingo while the other is limited by the blue line of Cuba.