lina line, is a public tavern; and this is the only house in all the great Dismal Swamp. The road and canal, however, are like the streets of a populous city; they are crowded with people from end to end, and the traveller is never alone. An enormous amount of produce goes over this canal; and it is perhaps the best stock in the world.

THE HALF-WAY HOUSE.-A strange interest attaches to this solitary dwelling in the Dismal Swamp. From the canal, at this place, to the lake, a few miles distant, is a feeder, or small canal; and this is the most practicable route to Lake Drummond. You go up in a canoe or small boat; and if you go in the spring season, the air is loaded with the perfume of flowers, and vocal with the songs of innumerable birds. On each side are stately trees, and a thick, tangled mass of impenetrable shrubbery; and about you is an atmosphere of romance, a region abounding in legendary reminiscences. You are in the country of the runaway and the hermit; and near the Half-way House have been acted many thrilling incidents. Duellists from Virginia and North-Carolina come here to fight; and the places which have witnessed these sanguinary encounters have also been celebrated for clandestine marriages.

Here we will pause in our career over the State, and listen to an interesting account of the first governor of North-Carolina. It will be found in the next lesson.

LESSON III.

BY SEATON GALES.

WILLIAM DRUMMOND was appointed by Sir William Berkely, Governor of the "County of Albemarle, in the Province of Carolina," in the September following the settlement at Durant's Neck, (the oldest in the State,) which event took place in April, 1663. He was an emigrant to Virginia from Scotland, and, judging from the scattering and vague descriptions we have of him, seems, even in that dark age, when the usurping disposition of the Stuart family infected even the New World with its fatal

malaria, to have cherished within his bosom the germ of an independent spirit. Bancroft remarks of him, that "he was probably a Presbyterian, a man of prudence and sagacity, and deeply imbued with the passion for popular liberty"-and Campbell terms him "a sedate Scotch gentleman, of estimable character." The circumstances under which he entered upon his administration are peculiarly worthy of note. The Constitutions of Shaftesbury and Locke had just been devised; the people were immersed, completely lost sight of, amid the prerogatives of landed proprietaries and titled nobility; trial by jury was but a nominal concession, and "popular enfranchisement was made an impossibility." How gloomy then the era-how utterly unpropitious the age to the development of principles such as Drummond entertained! And here we may consider that it cannot fail of proving a source of benefit and of pleasure, to trace a retrospect of the beginnings of any country. Reflection gratefully springs from the contemplation-man feels his ideas regarding his capacity for self-government enlarged, after the analysis and contrast. History, you know, has been defined to be philosophy teaching by example; and the definition is a most correct one, for a proper study of the past is the only road to future improvement. But we are digressing from the thread of our narrative.

Nothing explicit is handed down to us of the acts of Governor Drummond's authority, and we are consequently compelled to leave a blank of the interval that transpired between his installation as governor and the period when we again recognise him, no longer as governor, but as an active, ardent, and enthusiastic participator in Bacon's celebrated rebellion.* Secret causes had been long co-operating to produce an explosion, which was to burst with terrific and unexpected violence upon the heads of Berkely and his official compeers. The constitution had been vehemently rejected by the populace, the onerous taxation imposed upon the people resisted, the arrogance of the nobility contemned:-matters were approaching a crisis. Drummond was one of the main springs which directed every movement of the insurgent party. Naturally imbued, as we have said, with a loftiness of purpose, he "knew his rights, and, knowing, dared maintain them." Deeply prejudiced against the assumptions of royalty, he was ever ready and anxious to impede the progress of its rising innovations. His actions were prompted by no cold, sordid, calculating spirit of ultimate personal advantage-rather, by that pure, disinterested, active philanthropy, which would sacrifice selfish considerations upon the insulted altar of the common good. He kindled with his own hands the devouring element that was

*In Virginia.

to consume to ashes the home of his joys, that it might not afford shelter and protection to those who were wickedly warring against the rights of us all. Indeed, his whole career forms one of those anomalies in human existence, when every day is fraught with teeming wonders and strange designs. It is "an o'er-true tale," full of the startling romance of reality, the daring of heroism, and the vicissitude of fortune. And, as there can be no story, at the present day, calculated to allure the popular sense, unless some fair heroine is a conspicuous character, so, in this instance, can the prevailing appetite be gratified. The annals of chivalry may be ransacked, and there can be found no display of female pride and independence superior to that which manifested itself in Sarah Drummond, the wife of our first governor.* Warmly espousing the cause of her husband, she exhibited an unwavering constancy of purpose, and an affectionate regard for her "liege lord," as admirable in herself as it was creditable to her sex. She was emphatically one of those,

With devotion as humble as that which brings

To his idols the Indian's offerings;

Yet proud as that which the priestess feels,

When she nurses the flame at the shrine where she kneels.

In every scene of that violent commotion, Drummond was a zealous actor-in every phase of its agitation, he was the genius who rode on the whirlwind and directed the storm." All are acquainted with the issue of that rebellion. But Governor Drummond's life was destined to meet with an inglorious termination. After the close of the rebellion, he was apprehended and brought before Berkely, who, in the language of lacerated pride, insultingly bade him welcome to death. The patriot proudly avowed the part he had acted—was tried at one o'clock, on the twentieth May, 1679, and hung at four o'clock on the same day. Thus, this brave and extraordinary man breathed his last in mid-air suspended. Shameful and unmerited fate of a wonderful man! The tyrant Berkely was so far like odious Caligula of old, inasmuch as by a single blow he cut off the hopes of a large majority of the Ancient Dominion.†

By a paper in the office of the secretary of the state, it is ascertained that Sarah Drummond resided in James City county, Virginia, in 1679. Farther than this, the knowledge of the writer of this sketch extends not. Cannot some one in the "Old Dominion" trace up the history of this remarkable woman? † Some adequate estimate may be formed of the general character of the bigoted Berkely, by a consideration of the following extract from his answer to inquiries from the Committee of the Colonies:-"We have forty-eight parishes and our ministers are well paid, and, by my consent, should be better, if they would pray oftener and preach less. Yet I thank God,

there are no free schools and no printing, and, I hope, we shall not have these hundred years: for learning has brought disobedience, heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the best government."

Such is an epitome of what is known of Governor Drummond. As will be observed, the sketch is necessarily very imperfect—so contracted is our knowledge of the early history of the commonwealth. Those who are better versed in our fasti can supply deficiencies while to those unacquainted altogether with this subject, this incomplete outline may convey somewhat of interest. Yet, though his name is so indistinctly impressed upon the historic page, there remains one memento of him, stamped by Nature's hand, which even the hand of time cannot obliterate. There is a beautiful lake in the Dismal Swamp-beautiful in contrast with the drear, dark scenery that environs it-which yet boasts his name. It is the same romantic lakelet which forms the theme of one of Moore's most chaste and affecting poems, which we subjoin. The subject of the poem is as follows:They tell of a young man who lost his mind on the death of a girl he loved, and who, suddenly disappearing from his friends, was never heard of afterwards. As he had frequently said, in his ravings, that she was not dead, but gone to the Dismal Swamp, it is supposed he had wandered into that dreary wilderness, and had died of hunger, or been lost in some of its dreadful morasses.

They made her a grave too cold and damp

For a soul so warm and true;

And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,
Where all night long, by a fire-fly lamp,

She paddles her white canoe.

And her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see,
And her paddle I soon shall hear;
Long and loving our life shall be,
And I'll hide the maid in a cypress-tree,
When the footstep of death is near!

Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds—
His path was rugged and sore,
Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds,
Through many a fen, where the serpent feeds,
And man never trod before.

And when on the earth he sank to sleep,
If slumber his eyelids knew,

He lay where the deadly vine doth weep
Its venomous tear, and nightly steep
The flesh with blistering dew.

And near him the she-wolf stirr'd the brake,

And the copper-snake breathed in his ear,

Till he starting cried, from his dream awake,
"Oh! when shall I see the dusky lake,
And the white canoe of my dear?"

He saw the lake, a meteor bright
Quick over its surface play'd-

"Welcome," he said, "my dear one's light!"
And the dim shore echoed, for many a night,
The name of the death-cold maid!

Till he hollow'd a boat of the birchen-bark,
Which carried him off from shore;

For he followed the meteor spark :

The wind was high and the clouds were dark,
And the boat return'd no more.

But oft, from the Indian hunter's camp,
This lover and maid so true

Are seen, at the hour of midnight damp,
To cross the lake with a fire-fly lamp,

And paddle their white canoe!

Immortalized as is this clear lake by this heart-affecting association, it is doubly so in retaining the honoured name of NorthCarolina's first governor. A polished mirror, it will ever reflect his fame in rays as bright as the dewdrops that weep on its own crystal bosom; and long after quarto and folio shall have been cankered by the consuming worm, will that still water murmur gentle cadence in echo to the associations of the past.