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Show 1836- 1837] Flagg's Far West 293 day. But the dark landlord looked with no favouring eye upon the proceeding; and, as he was by no means the man to stand for ceremony, he presently let drop a civil hint of the propriety of retiring; the propriety of complying with which civil hint was at once perceived, early as was the | hour; and soon the whole house and village was buried in slumber. And then " the stranger within their gates" rose quietly from his couch, and in a few moments was luxuriating in the fresh night- wind, laden with perfumes from the flowerets of the prairie it swept. And beautifully was the wan moonlight playing over forest, and prairie, and rustling maize- field, and over the gray church spire, and the old village in its slumbering. And the giant cliffs rose white and ghastly beyond the dark waters of the endless river, as it rolled on in calm magnificence, " for ever flowing and the same for ever." And associations of the scene with other times and other men thronged " thick and fast" upon the fancy. The first vermeil flush of morning was firing the eastern forest- tops, when a single horseman was to be seen issuing from the narrow lanes of the ancient village of Portage des Sioux, whose inhabitants had not yet shaken off the drowsiness of slumber, and winding slowly along beneath the huge trees skirting the prairie's margin. After an hour of irregular wandering through the heavy meadow- grass, drenched and dripping in the dews, and glistening in the morning sunlight, he plunges into the [ 38] old woods on his right, and in a few moments stands beneath the vine-dad sycamores, with the brilliant, trumpet- formed flower of the bignonia suspended from the branches upon the margin of a stream. It is the " Father of Waters," and beyond its bounding bosom lies the little hamlet of Grafton, slumbering in quiet beauty beneath the cliffs. The scene is a lovely one: the mighty river rolling calmly and majes- |