hotel, café house, and “bureau des affaires” for the little self-incorporated body.
The situation was not chosen with much regard to beauty or health; it was in a rich level valley, a few rods from the river, which they vainly supposed would furnish an easy access by navigation to remote places, particularly to Charleston, where many of their number remained. The simplicity of this idea is much in character with the many impracticable views which a new country suggests, and is not more strange than the belief that a small township, holding its own regulations and manners, could flourish in the midst of a wild country, independent of commercial relations; yet time alone proved the futility of both. The town was soon busy with the industry of its tradesmen; silk and flax were manufactured, whilst the cultivators of the soil were taxed with the supply of corn and wine. The hum of cheerful voices arose during the week, mingled with the interdicted songs of praise; and on the sabbath the quiet worshippers, assembled in their rustic church, listened with fervent response to that faithful pastor, who had been their spiritual leader through perils by sea and land, and who now directed their free, unrestrained devotion to the Lord of the forest.
Did I say there was no beauty there?—none but the clear glancing of the rippling stream, and the high arching of the solemn woods above, wreathing their limbs in fantastic forms against the deep blue sky, and forming a natural temple, in which each tree stood up tall and distinct as a polished shaft in the midst. The solemn Elm, and deep green river Oak were there, sustaining the slender Larch, and twining their branches through the light-green foliage of the Maple, which beautifully contrasted the glittering notched leaves of the fragrant Gum. The woods still wave on in melancholy grandeur, with the added glory of near a hundred years; but they who once lived and worshipped beneath them—where are they? Shades of my ancestors—where? No crumbling wreck, no mossy ruin, points the antiquarian research to the place of their sojourn, or to their last resting-places! The traces of a narrow trench, surrounding a square plat of ground, now covered
