ney were over; for the voyage of two thousand | To have presented any thing like a complete miles down the Nile was but a pleasure - trip. view of it we should have been obliged to quote And here Captain Speke closes his account of the almost the whole work. Opening to the world most adventurous and successful exploring ex- an entirely new region, it will rank as the most pedition of modern times. We have given mere- interesting book of travel which has appeared for ly a bare outline of some of its salient points. many years. MAHAMED'S PARTY ON THE MARCH. THREE Away to the west as the sun went down; Each thought of the woman who loved him the best, And the children stood watching them out of the town: Three wives sat up in the light-house tower, And trimmed the lamps as the sun went down; And they looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower, While the night rack came rolling up, ragged and brown; But men must work, and women must weep, Though storms be sudden, and waters deep, And the harbor bar be moaning. Three corpses lie out on the shining sands, In the morning gleam as the tide went down, But men must work, and women must weep, And the sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep, And good-by to the bar and its moaning. CHARLES KINGSLEY. the owner of the whole territory along the Gulf of Mexico below the 35th parallel, from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Ocean, including its great Eastern Peninsula, under the name of East and West Florida. The United States claimed the ownership of the latter, or the region westward of the Perdito River (now the States of Alabama and Mississippi), and this caused a dispute which was unsettled when war was declared by the United States against Great Britain in the summer of 1812. The former proceeded to make a practical solution of the question by taking possession of the territory claimed for that government, before the British, should be able to get a foothold in the land. General Wilkinson and a competent number of troops took possession of Mobile, and a military post was established at Mount Vernon, high up the Mobile River, toward its birth-place at the confluence of the Tombigbee and Alabama. The Spanish garrison at Mobile withdrew to Pensacola, and the Spanish authorities at the latter place blustered and threatened, but nothing more, excepting to throw open that port to the war-vessels of the British, giving them every "aid and comfort" in their power, joining with them and hear the mighty Shawnoese, whose exploits in inciting the Indians of the Creek Confederacy in the buffalo chase, on the war-path, and in the to war against the United States and its citizens council had filled their ears, even in boyhood, in their country, and in supplying the savages with wondrous tales of achievements won. It with weapons, ammunition, and food. At one was a successful day, and Tecumtha was greatly time war with the Spaniards seemed inevitable, encouraged. He crossed the Coosa and went and General Andrew Jackson led a large num- boldly forward in the direction of the Great Falls ber of Tennessee Volunteers from Nashville to of the Tallapoosa (in the southwest port of the Natchez, in the autumn and winter of 1812-'13, present Tallapoosa country) to Tuckabatchee, with the expectation of engaging in it. The the ancient Creek capital, where Colonel Hawcloud passed away. kins, the United States Indian agent, had called a great council of the Creeks. Hawkins was highly esteemed by them, and at his call full five thousand Indians responded in person, and many white people and negroes mingled with them at the gathering. Omens of a war tempest soon appeared in the southern firmament, and Jackson was not allowed to remain long in quiet on his plantation. British emissaries, pale and dusky, were busy among the Indians of the Gulf region, endeavoring to stir them up to war against the Americans around them, hoping thereby to divide and weaken the military power of the United States, and lessen the danger that menaced Canada with invasions and conquests. Chief among these emissaries in zeal and influence was Tecumtha, the great Shawnoese warrior, who, as early as the spring of 1811, had, with patriotic designs, visited the Southern tribes, and labored to secure their alliance with Northern and Western savages in a great confederation, whose prime object was to stay the encroachments of the white men. He went among the Seminoles in Florida, the Cherokees and Creeks in Western Georgia and Alabama, and the Des Moines in Missouri, but accomplishing little more than sowing the seeds of discontent, which might, in time, germinate into open hostility. He returned to his home on the Wabash just after the battle of Tippecanoe, which his unworthy brother, The Prophet, had rashly brought on, and which destroyed his hopes of a purely Indian Confederacy. Hereafter his patriotic efforts were put forth in alliance with the British, who gladly accepted the aid of the cruel savages of the Northwest. In the autumn of 1812, after the surrender of Detroit and the Michigan Territory promised long quiet on that frontier, Tecumtha went again to the Gulf region. He took his brother, The Prophet, with him, partly to employ him as an instrument in managing the superstitions of the Indians, and partly to prevent his doing mischief at home. They were accompanied by about thirty warriors. The Choctaws and Chickasaws, among whom they passed on the way, would not listen favorably to Tecumtha's seductive words; but the Seminoles in Florida and Georgia, and the Creeks in the present Alabama, lent to him willing ears. He was among the latter in October, when he crossed the Alabama River at Autauga, in the lower part of the present Autauga county, and there addressed the assembled Creeks for the first time. His eloquence, his patriotic appeals, and his fame as a warrior won him many followers, and with these and his own retinue he went on to Cosawta, on the Alabama, and at the Hickory Ground addressed a large concourse of warriors who had flocked to see Tecumtha approached this great assemblage with well-feigned modesty. He kept at the outer circle of spectators until the conclusion of the agent's first day's address, when, at the head of his thirty followers from the Ohio region, he marched with dignity into the square, all of them entirely naked except their flaps and ornaments. Their faces were painted black, and their heads were adorned with eagle-feathers. White buffalo tails dragged behind, suspended by bands around their waists. Like appendages were attached to their arms; and their whole appearance was as hideous as possible, and their bearing uncommonly pompous and ceremonious. They marched around and around in the square, and then approaching the Creek chiefs, they cordially gave them the Indian salutation of a shake at arm's-length, and exchanged tobacco in token of friendship. Only one chief, Captain Isaac of Coosawda, refused to greet Tecumtha. On his head were a pair of buffalo horns, and these he shook at the Shawnoese visitor with contempt, for he said Tecumtha was a bad man and no greater than he. Tecumtha appeared in great state in the square each day, but kept silence until Hawkins had finished his business and departed for the agency on the Flint River. Then he was silent no longer. That night a grand council was held in the great round-house. It was packed with eager listeners. In a fiery and revengeful speech Tecumtha poured forth eloquent and incendiary words. He exhorted them to abandon the customs of the pale faces and return to those of their fathers. He begged them to cast away the plow and the loom, and abandon the culture of the soil as unbecoming noble Indian warriors, as they were. He warned them that servitude or extinction at the hands of the white race would speedily be their doom, for they were grasping and cruel; and he desired them to dress only in the skins of beasts which the Great Spirit had given them, and to use for weapons of war only the bow and arrow, the war-club, and the scalping-knife. He concluded by informing them that their friends, the British, had sent him from the Great Lake to invite them out upon the war path for the purpose of expelling all Americans from Indian soil; and that the powerful King of England was ready to reward thousand souls, of whom at least seven thousand were warriors. Yet peace was the guarantee of their existence. They were hemmed in by them handsomely if they would fight under his banner. The wily Prophet, at the same time, who had been informed by the British when a comet would appear, declared to the excited war-powerful and rapidly-increasing communities of riors that they would see the arm of Tecumtha, like pale fire, stretched out on the vault of heaven at a certain time, and then they would know by the sign when to begin war. It was almost dawn before this famous council adjourned, and then more than half of the braves present had resolved on war against the Americans. Tecumtha, full of encouragement, went forth visiting all of the important Creek towns, and enlisting many recruits for the British cause. Among the most distinguished of them was Weatherford, a powerful, handsome, sagacious, brave, and eloquent half-blooded chief. But others equally eminent withstood the persuasion of the great Shawnoese. One of the most conspicuous of these was The Big Warrior of Tuckabatchee, whose name was Tustinuggee-Thlucco. Tecumtha was extremely anxious to win him, but the Big Warrior remained true to the United States. At length the angry Shawnoese said, with vehemence, as he pointed his finger on the Big Warrior's face, "Tustinuggee-Thlucco, your blood is white. You have taken my red-sticks and my talk, but you do not mean to fight. know the reason. You do not believe that the Great Spirit has sent me. You shall believe it. I will leave directly and go straight to Detroit. When I get there I will stamp my foot upon the ground, and shake down every house in Tuckabatchee." The Big Warrior said nothing, but long pondered this remarkable speech. I white people; and between them and the north- We Tecumtha had enjoined the leaders of the war party to keep their instructions secret; and for many months, while civil war was kindling in the bosom of the Creek nation because of the powerful and zealously opposing peace party, and the land was filled with quarrels, fights, murders, and violence of every kind, it was difficult for the public authorities to determine with any certainty whether or no any considerable number of the Creeks would join the British standard. Colonel Hawkins, the agent, believed that nothing more serious than a war between native factions would ensue. It was well known that Peter M'Queen, a half-blood of Tallase, who was one of the leaders of the war party, was doing every thing in his power to accomplish that result; while Big Warrior was equally active in efforts to avert so great a calamity. On one hand was seen the hideous war-dance of the lakes, taught them by Tecumtha, and on the other the peaceful, quiet, anxious, determined deportment of men resolved on peace. The whole Creek nation became a seething caldron of passion, of angry words and threatenings, which were soon developed into sanguinary deeds. It was indeed a remarkable speech. Events soon proved it to be prophetic. Natural phenomena--one that might be foretold by astronomers, and the other always beyond the knowledge of mortals-combined to give tremendous effect to Tecumtha's words and mission. The comet, the blazing "arm of Tecumtha" in the sky, appeared, and at about the time when the common Indians, who believed in the great Shawnoese and his mystical brother, knew by calculation that Tecumtha must have arrived at Detroit, there was heard a deep rumbling beneath the ground, and a heaving of the earth that made the houses of Tuckabatchee reel and totter as if about to fall. The startled savages ran out of their huts exclaiming, "Tecumtha is at Detroit! Tecumtha is at Detroit! we feel the stamp of his foot!" It was the shock of an earthquake On account of the civil war raging here and that was felt all over the Gulf region in Decem- there and every where in the Creek country the ber, 1812. But it did not move the Big War-white settlers were placed in great peril. In the rior from his allegiance. spring of 1813 they were made to expect an exTecumtha's visit proved to be a most sad one terminating blow. They knew that a British for the Creeks as a nation. It brought terrible squadron was in the Gulf, and in friendly intercalamities upon them, first in the form of a civil course with the Spanish authorities at the post at war, and then in almost utter destruction at the Pensacola. They knew that the fiery M'Queen hands of the exasperated Americans. He left and other leaders had gone to that post with seeds of discontent to germinate and expand into about three hundred and fifty warriors with many violent agitation. Chief was arrayed against pack-horses, intended, doubtless, for the conveychief, and family against family, on the question ance of arms and supplies from the British to the of peace or war with the Americans. They war party in the interior. Every day the cloud were strong as a nation, numbering about thirty of danger palpably thickened, and the inhabit |