The sun rose up, and cheerily
Before the piping blast,

The stout ship rode from southern seas
So gaily, and so fast,

That every mariner, in prayer,
Blessed the blue ocean, and the sky,
And God's all-favoring air.

Many were left on the lessening shore,
Many from off the strand,

Weeping the loving and loved-gazed out
Waving the tell-tale hand;

Mothers, and sires, and brothers were there,
And sisters, a blessed name to all-
Watching the ship so fair.

Smaller and smaller, a single speck

Dots the horizon's rim,

And the ship and the mariners all are gone,
And many an eye grows dim;
"Never," they say-as they weep in vain,
The crowd on the distant shore and strand-
"May the ship come back again."

The ship glides on with her mariners,
Never a dream have they

Of danger, though tempests hurtle 'round,
But merrily up alway,

They watch the clouds for a fresher gale,
And shout when the storm-king's trumpet breath
Beats on the bellying sail.

Gallant and brave those mariners,

Tried on the Nor'land wave-
Never a heart of one grew faint,

Whether the storm might rave-
Or the sea shook out its flag of foam-
Or smote in wrath on its thunder drum-
Or turned a thought to home.

Save 'twere to bless the loving and loved-
And the stout ship rode on,

Till the warm southern seas were passed,

And the warm winds were gone;
Still she rode on, a gallant sight,
Cleaving the milk-white foam in twain,
Leaving a track of light.

A gallant sight-a thousand leagues
Behind her lay untrod

By other keel, or by other souls,

And the sky seemed, and God

Nearer each day, as those Nor'land seas
She coursed, like a steed that is fitly reined,
And laughed at the icy breeze.

But wo betide-the gallantest steed

That ever answered rein,
And gallantest knight that ever piled

His foes in a heap of slain,
Must sometimes yield to the serried foe,
Must yield to the myriad bristling spears,
Yield to the conquerer's blow!

Thus fated-the ship and her mariners,
Riding so gay and fast,
Were driven so swift on the Nor'land seas,
Spurred by the piping blast-
That sudden they came to an icy land,
It seemed an icy, mountainous clime,
Mountains-but never a strand.

An icy land-'twas a marvellous land,
Seen at the ruddy dawn-

As the mariners, dreaming beautiful dreams,
Woke, and their dreams were gone!
A marvellous land, with its mountains bright,
Tipping, it seemed, their glistening spears
With more than starry light.

But beauty flies when danger is nigh,

As frost when the sun comes down-
And every gleam of the icy spears
Grew to a terrible frown;
For the ship sped on-as it knew no fear,
And the mariners shook with horrible dread
Of doom so awfully near.

Yet swifter it seemed, as the mountains rose
Fairer in size and sight-

The ship swept on, like a riderless steed,
Mocking the helmsman's fright;
Swifter she rode, like a bolt she sped
Her way through the icy crags piled 'round
Hiding all but the sky o'erhead!

Still stout was the ship, and stouter in heart
The mariners on her deck:

But never a ship, nor mariners bold,

E'er met so terrible wreck;
Gladly each soul would have yielded its breath
On the open sea-but 'twas awful to think
Of dying a piecemeal death.

For never, they felt, could the icy chain
Which girt them round and round,
Be cleft again, but for life and death

They were fast and firmly bound;
They saw the white moon when midnight came,
And the pointed stars,-and the sun at noon,
Glared down with an eye of flame!

lina, as

To be roused out of a middle nap when there's no occasion for it, is at any time a ceremony to growl at, if one happens to be a growler; but to be so disturbed at midnight in the middle of a wood swamp, in North CaroI was in August last, with the musquitoes as thick as snow-flakes during a Vermont nor-easter, and the fever-and-ague so dense in the atmosphere that you could cut it with a knife, is enough to tap the gall of a saint, if saints have any gall, and let out his bitterness. But as I am neither a growler nor a saint, it seemed most wise for me to tumble into the other tack and take a pull at the sweet end of our stick of ill-luck, if so be, I could

find it.

Our party consisted of about three hundred, men, women and children, bound southward in a train of railroad-cars. Our next stopping place was to have been the town of Welden, N. C., where we were assured that we should arrive at about midnight, and find ́ample and comfortable lodgings; but as I stated before, we were roused from our middle naps by the stoppage of the train in a wood swamp. Avoid ing the sleepy inquiries of the ladies, as they lifted their disjointed curls and ringlets from the laps of their husbands, where they had coiled them down for a doze, and had been comfortably (?) snoozing away the hours of night-travel, I caught the arm of a companion, and having shaken him up like a bottle of

physic, to make him lively, dragged him forth upon the platform for an observation. The boiler of the locomotive was pouring out its remnant of steam with a lazy sort of expression, that went half groaning, half hissing through the wood, and seemed to say "I'm laid up for the night." Here and there pineknot flambeaux gleamed cloudily among the trees and about the cars, borne by negroes, and as they sent their smoky glare through the dense atmosphere and darkness, gave one an idea of the place that Don Juan is supposed to have inhabited, after his life of stolen sweets on earth.

"Conductor, what's the matter?" This was the fiftieth time the poor devil had been bored with the same question, varied and diversified with an interjection, an expletive, or an oath, according to humor of the inquisitor, and as many times had he given in his peculiarly philosophical way, the same answer, thus-"The storm has carried away the bridge between here and Welden, and undermined a quarter of a mile of the track, so that it is impossible to proceed. In the morning we will have stages to carry you to town." At the least calculation, a ton weight of curiosity was removed from the breast of each individual who listened to this calm reply; but if one might judge from the guttural rumbling that followed, an equal amount of very unsaintly gall took the place of fugitive curiosity. One of two things remained to be done; either to stay in the cars and be sucked to death by musquitoes, or take shelter under the cloud of a flambeau, and look out for an adventure-small chance for the latter as it seemed-but there's no harm in trying. My companion is something of a rover like myself, when he's awake, and it was agreed that we should employ one of the sable cicerones and see where he would lead us. Accordingly, a six foot, woolly-header was hailed

"Ebony!"

"Here, massa," answered the gigantic stick of sealing wax, as he sprang towards the platform.

"Is there a public house near here, Ebony?" "Yes, massa, two, close down here, cross de swamp. Go dere, massa?"

"Can you show us the way ?"

"Oh yes, massa, I knows him like a book." "Lead on then." We set out in an atmosphere of pitch and ague, and dove into the forest. "Ebony!"

"Massa?"

"How do you manage to get so many blood sucking musquitoes here?"

"Oh we raises 'em, massa, we do,-yah, yah," and the old darkey uttered a chuckling laugh, which denoted an under current of fun. There was evidently something just below the skin of his teeth that was itching to get out—so we gave it a chance.

"What do you raise them for, Ebony?"

The old fellow's shoulders fairly shook with glee,-yah, yah, yah, resounded through the still gloom, as he answered in broken passages-Yes, massa, we raises 'em, yah, yah; we raises 'em for—keep away de bobalishioners— yah, yah, yah!"

"For what! Bobalishioners! What do you mean?"

My friend, more quick of apprehension than I, suggested that he meant the abolitionists.

"Yes, massa, dats it, de bobalishionists don't like skeeters, no how-dare skins aint tick nuff, yah, yah, yah!"

"And you don't seem to like the abolitionists any better than they like the musquitoes." Here our guide put on a sober face, and looking over his shoulder, in a tone that showed that he was afraid he might have gone too far, enquired-"Massa bobalishioner?”

"Oh no, Ebony, never fear, we are no abolitionists."

"Taut so-Cuffe 'taut so-massa look like gemman all de time."

By this time the light of a blazing fire was visible through the trees, at a distance of a few hundred yards, towards which our guide led the way.

"What light is that, Ebony ?" "Public house dare, massa."

"Good, we shall be there directly."

And we were there directly-emerging from the wood upon an open place, we found ourselves upon a road near the river's bank, and, as we afterwards learned, at the spot where one end of the railroad bridge ought to have rested, and did rest before the recent flood carried it away. In the middle of the road a pile of pine logs were blazing away, sending a bright glow along the surface of the ground and a dense column of black smoke upward into the welkin darkness. Wrapped in a coarse blanket, the person of one of our fellow passengers, who had got the start of us in search of the "public house," was lying quietly by the side of the burning logs, having taken shelter there from the swarms of tormenting insects--on

would be sent after us during the day. In the course of the morning our friend of the pinelog-fire field-bedstead, made his appearance at the cars, dressed like an opera-monkey, elegantly begrimed with pitch-pine smoke, and swearing French oaths by the yard. He proved to be a fashionably mustachioed son of Gaul, taking notes of American travel, for publication in the metropolis of the French Republic, and I promise you the chapter of that night's adventures was set in italics.

Preparation was now made for a march, and as every body must have a change of clothes when they arrived on christian ground, the baggage cars were overhauled, trunks opened, and small packages made up, or the necessary linen for a change taken from the trunks and put into carpet bags or valises, to be carried by hand, and thus one by one the party gradually lessened, each carrying in his hand a temporary parcel. The last preparatory operation of this kind that I witnessed, was that of