Just beyond that bluff you see yonder, there is a low flat plain covered with brushwood and tufted with trees; on the left, this prairie is bounded by a chain of low hills, and on the right a broad river, which last we have named the St.John, because it bears some resemblance to a stream of that name in Florida; beyond this plain there is a swamp." "And," added Jack, "behind this swamp there is a magnificent forest of cedars, peopled with the finest furs imaginable, but garnished, however, with formidable claws and rows of teeth." "I was not aware," said Willis, "that we were within reach of such amiable neighbors." "Oh, they cannot reach us; thanks to the conformation of that chain of hills you see yonder, there is only one pass that opens into our settlement, and that we have taken care to shut up and fortify." "It appears then," said Willis, "that there will be no difficulty in finding the animals, but--" "Come, Willis, no more buts; you hunt in your own way from morning till night, let us for once hunt in ours." "I go a-hunting ?" "Yes, there you are, charging your piece just now." "Oh, my pipe you mean; but look at the difference; mosquitoes bite human beings, they don't eat them!" "And, you may add, their skins don't make bed-clothes.

Besides, if my mother takes rheumatism or the ague, it will be you that is to blame." "I would rather face all the tigers in Bengal and all the lions in Africa than incur such a responsibility.

I will, therefore, take a part in your cruise, and if any accident happens to either of you, I shall stay in the forest till nothing is left of me but my cap and my bones.

In this way I will escape all reproach in this world, and I may as well, after all, rejoin my old commander, Captain Littlestone, by this road as by any other." In the meantime, they had reached the coast of Waldeck, and having landed, they found the outhouses and sheds that had been erected there in satisfactory order; the apes had not forgotten a battue that had once been got up for their special behoof, as not an individual was to be seen in the neighborhood.

A morass of the district that had been converted into a rice plantation, promised an abundant crop; and the cotton plants, that Frank had once mistaken for flakes of snow, reared their woolly blossoms, looking for all the world like the powdered heads of our ancestors.