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INDIAN TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES.

" He was dressed in a different garb from any thing the chief had ever seen worn by the Indians, and he held a bow in his withered hand and a quiver filled with arrows was slung across his shoulders. As the chief looked more closely at him, he saw that this unearthly visitor was, in fact, a grinning skeleton, for his white ribs showed plainly through the rents in his robe, and though seemingly he looked at the chief, there were no eyes in the empty sockets he turned toward him.

" Presently the figure rose up, and, in a hollow voice, spoke to the chief, and told him to return from whence he came, for their race was doomed; that they would disappear before the white people like dew before the morning sun; that he was the spirit of one of his forefathers, and that he came to warn him of the fate that awaited him and his people; that he could remember when the Indians were- as numerous as the leaves on the trees, and the white people were few and weak, and shut up in their towns upon the seashore   now they are strong, and their number can not be counted, and before many years they will drive the last remnant of the red race into the waters of the great western ocean. ' Go back,' said the figure, advancing toward the chief and waving his withered hand, ' and tell your people to prepare themselves for their doom, and to meet me in the " happy hunting grounds," where the white man shall trouble them no more.' #

"As he said this, he came up close to the chief, and placed his skeleton fingers on his head, and glared at him out of the empty sockets in his fleshless skull. ' Son of a fading race, the last hour of your unfortunate people is fast approaching, and soon not a vestige of them will be left on all this wide continent. They and their forests, their hunting grounds, their villages and wigwams, will disappear forever, and the white man's cities and towns will rise up in places where once they chased the buffalo, the elk, and the deer.'

" The chief was as fearless a warrior as ever went to battle, but when he felt the cold touch of that skeleton hand, a horrible.