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Born in the wilderness, the daughter of one bold pioneer and married to another, she had never seen anything but woods, cane-brakes, cotton, and negroes, and yet, in her kindness and hospitality, she displayed a refinement of feeling and good breeding. She was daughter of the celebrated Daniel Boone, a name which has acquired a reputation even in Europe.
On March 24 "Old Mad Jackson," just appointed by President Madison to be major-general in the United States army, set out against "Crazy-war-hunter" Menewa at Tohopeka. The way was difficult, through dense timber, swamps and cane-brakes. Alabama, in these days, had been only thinly settled by white people.
In it were the voices of their fathers long gone, come back from the rice-fields and the cane-brakes and the cotton-rows, voices so sweet and plaintive that they were haunted. "I we-ent out een de wilderness, En I fell upon mah knees, En I called upon mah Savior, Whut sh-all I do for save? He replied: Halleluian! Sinnuh, sing! Halleluian! Ma-ry, Mar-tha, halle Hallelu Halleluian!"
The general rendezvous of this gang of miscreants was on the Arkansas side of the river, where they concealed their negroes in the morasses and cane-brakes. The depredations of this extensive combination were severely felt; but so well were their plans arranged, that although Murel, who was always active, was everywhere suspected, there was no proof to be obtained.
The fortunes which befell those of this colony, trying to find a suitable site in that land of bushes and cane-brakes, are not agreeable to follow. For thirteen years the "paternal providence of Versailles" watched over them, sending them marriageable women, soldiers, priests, and nuns, but so little food that famine and pestilence often came to their miserable stockades.
He succeeded in landing many miles below, on the eastern bank, but he was so bruised, that for many days he was unable to move. One day a report was spread in the neighbourhood of Port Gibson, that a strange monster, of the ourang-outang species, had penetrated the cane-brakes upon the western banks of the Mississippi.
As soon as the rider feels his horse sinking, the first movement, if an inexperienced traveller, is to throw himself from the saddle, and endeavour to wade or to swim to the cane-brakes, the roots of which give to the ground a certain degree of stability. In that case, his fate is probably sealed, as he is in immediate danger of the "cawana."
Had he seen that face before, or why did it provoke vague reminiscences of great cypresses overhead, and deep-shaded leafy distances with bayous winding out of sight through them, and cane-brakes impenetrable to the eye, and axe-strokes heard but unseen slashing through them only a few feet away? Suddenly he knew.
I had scarcely been half-an-hour occupied in smoking my pipe, when all the dogs, in full cry, broke from the briars, and rushed into the cane-brakes, passing me at a distance of thirty yards.
There he seemed to see familiar faces of comrades who had grown up with him from infancy: he saw his busy wife, bustling in her preparations for his evening meals; he heard the merry laugh of his boys at their play, and the chirrup of the baby at his knee, and then, with a start, all faded; and he saw again the cane-brakes and cypresses of gliding plantations, and heard again the creaking and groaning of the machinery, all telling him too plainly that all that phase of life had gone by for ever.
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