which few men had beheld, and fewer yet had thought of making the scene of their habitations and their homes. Tedious was then the route which now affords such pleasure; men hurried from a spot where social intercourse scarcely existed, and where the solitary Indian hunter still reigned the undisturbed lord. Towards the close of a delightful autumnal day, as they were gently entering in a boat the beautiful lake of Oneida, and had just emerged from the embouchure of Wood Creek, the languid strokes of a distant oar caught the ear of our travellers; it sounded nearer and nearer, and they soon found it proceeded from a small canoe, rowed by one solitary individual. As it approached alongside, they asked him whither he was destined? He sullenly answered, he was bound to Oneida Castle. His appearance excited the attention of the party: his garments were faded, though not in tatters; his face such as a Salvador Rosa would have loved to portray; his accent bespoke him of French descent. He passed on as if wishing to hold no further converse; and our travellers had scarcely ceased wondering at the incident, before his canoe was far behind them.

The boat slowly proceeded on, the sun had sunk below the horizon, and the shades of night were thickening fast, when an island of considerable extent appeared before them. Although the party had heard of its existence, and the name by which it was known by the boatmen of the lake, yet no person was known to have ever before visited it, or landed on its shores; the boatmen called it, "Hoger Bust," (in English "High Breast,") a Dutch appellation, which its appearance and situation rendered apt and appropriate. The nearer they approached, they were surprised at perceiving marks of cultivation; convinced that it must be inhabited, they shouted loudly, but no one answered to their call. They then landed, and notwithstanding the night had set in, with lights which they struck in the boat they traced their way through a short wood, and suddenly entered at the end of it upon an avenue of shrubbery, and twigs of trees interwoven in the form of lattice-work, lining each side of the walk; at the termination of which a rude hut was visible. They knocked at the door, and it was opened by a female, who accosted

them in French: they informed her of the cause of their visit, and then asked her if she was not disturbed by the noise and cry they made? She told them she was not, for she thought it was occasioned by the Indians, who were her friends. Our travellers beheld her with surprise; she was clothed in coarse and uncouth attire, had no shoes on her feet, and her long hair hung in wild luxuriance down her back; her air and mien were, however, those of a person educated and accomplished. She seemed scarcely twenty; her size was small, and her interesting appearance was heightened by an eye full of intelligence and expression. On informing her of their wish to remain on the island during the night, she politely requested them to make use of her house; this, however, they, with many thanks, declined, but pitched their tents near it, whilst the bargemen slept on the shore, near the boat. Next morning, they paid their respects to the interesting recluse, and received from her the following particulars of her history: The man whom they had met on the lake, was, she said, her husband, who had gone to the Castle of Oneida to procure provisions. They had been some time inhabitants of this solitude, though not always on the island they now occupied; they had resided for months in the Castle of Oneida, among the Indians; she described them as mild and unoffending, that she had formed friendships there which had even to that day been of service to herself and husband; and, as the Indians had not forgotten them, they occasionally left at their secluded settlement, on a return from their hunting excursions, a portion of their game. She had herself, she said, learned to fish and fowl; had often swam from one island to another; and employed her gun with great success in the destruction of wild fowl. Such was all that the fair stranger was pleased to disclose of a life evidently of no ordinary cast, and the travellers not wishing to embarrass her by questions as to the cause of her seclusion, intimated their intention of leaving the island immediately. On hearing this, she flew, with an eager avidity to oblige, to the garden, and with her own hands dug up vegetables from the ground, and presented them to her guests. Before they departed, they selected some wines out of their stores, and other articles which would

be luxurious for her in this comparative wilderness, and left them where she was sure to find them, considering it an indelicacy to make her a direct offer of them. They then left the island, uttering an inward prayer for her welfare. On their way back, they stopped at a settlement some miles down the lake, and having related their adventure to some of the settlers, were informed, that the lady had been once a nun in France; that she had been taken from a convent in Lisle, by the person they met alone in the canoe, and carried to America; that the cause of his occupying the island was his extreme jealousy; that he rigorously restrained her from going any where from it, and had refused to allow her to visit a wife of one of the settlers, who had made a request to that purpose. How strange that such feelings should pervade a man among the wilds. of the forest; that he should not think the being on whom he has placed his earthly affection secure in a solitary isle, which holds but her and himself for its inhabitants !

From an old memorandum book of one of the party.

REMARKABLE PARRICIDE.

A MAN was tried for and convicted of the murder of his own father. The evidence against him was merely circumstantial, and the principal witness was his sister. She proved that her father possessed a small income, which, with his industry, enabled him to live with comfort; that her brother, the prisoner, who was his heir at law, had long expressed a great desire to come into the possession of his father's effects; and that he had long behaved in a very undutiful manner to him, wishing, as the witness believed, to put a period to his existence by uneasiness and vexation; that, on the evening the murder was committed, the deceased went a small distance from the house, to milk a cow he had for some time kept, and that the witness also went out to spend the evening and to sleep, leaving only her brother in the house; that, returning home early in the morning, and finding that her father and brother were absent, she was much alarmed, and sent for some neighbors

to consult with them, and to receive advice what should be done; that in company with these neighbors she went to the hovel in which her father was accustomed to milk the cow, where they found him murdered in the most inhuman manner, his head being almost beat to pieces; that a suspicion immediately falling on her brother, and there being then some snow on the ground, in which the footsteps of a human being to and from the hovel, were observed, it was agreed to take one of the brother's shoes, and to measure therewith the impressions in the snow: this was done, and there did not remain a doubt but that the impressions were made with his shoes. Thus confirmed in their suspicions, they then immediately went to the prisoner's room, and after a diligent search, they found at hammer in the corner of a private drawer, with several spots of blood upon it, and with a small splinter bone, and some brains in a crack which they discovered in the handle. The circumstances of finding the deceased and the hammer, as described by the former witness, were fully proved by the neighbors whom she had called: and upon this evidence the prisoner was convicted, and suffered death, but denied the act to the last. About four years after, the witness was extremely ill, and understanding that there were no possible hopes of her recovery, she confessed that her father and brother having offended her, she was determined they should both die; and accordingly when the former went to milk the cow, she followed him with her brother's hammer, and in his shoes; that she beat out her father's brains with the hammer, and then laid it where it was afterwards found; that she then went from home to give a better color to this wicked business, and that her brother was perfectly innocent of the crime for which he had suffered. She was immediately taken into custody. but died before she could be brought to trial.

WONDERFUL ESCAPE FROM THE BASTILE.

THE following narrative is extracted from Memoirs of M. Henry Masser de la Tude, a gentleman, who was confined thirty-five years in the state prison of France, notwithstanding he escaped once from the Bastile, and twice from the castle of Vincennes.

After recounting a slight offence against Madame de Pompadour, for which he was sent to the Bastile, M. de la Tude relates his removal to the castle of Vincennes, and escape from thence; with his being retaken, and sent again to the Bastile : and then follows his narrative of his second escape, in company with M. d'Alegre, his fellow prisoner; an escape which perhaps is unparalleled in the annals of human ingenuity and perseverance.

As we cast our eyes, says M. de la Tude, on the walls of the Bastile, which are above six feet thick; four iron grates at the windows, and as many in the chimney; and as we considered by how many armed men the prison is guarded; the height of the walls, and the trenches most commonly full of water; it seemed morally impossible for two prisoners, immured in a cell, and destitute of human assistance to make their escape.

It was necessary to have 1400 feet of cord; two ladders, one of wood, from twenty to thirty feet in length, and another of rope 180; to remove several iron grates from the chimney, and to bore a hole, in one night, through a wall many feet thick, at the distance of only fifteen feet from a sentinel. It was necessary to create the articles I have mentioned to accomplish our escape, and we had no resource but our own hands. It was necessary to conceal the wooden and the rope ladder of 250 steps, a foot long and an inch thick, and several other prohibited particulars, in a prisoner's room: though the officers, accompanied by the turnkey, paid us a visit many times a week, and honored our persons with a strict examination.

You must have been confined in the Bastile, to know how wretches are treated there. Figure to yourself ten years spent in a room without seeing or speaking to the prisoner over your head. Many times have there been