 in vast masses one above the
other, which whirled violently, in the gusts, opening, occasionally, to admit
transient glimpses of the bright and glorious sight of the heavens, dwelling in
a magnificence by far too grand and durable, to be disturbed by the fitful
efforts of the lower world. Beneath, the wind swept across the wild and naked
Prairies, with a violence that is seldom witnessed, in any section of the
continent less open. It would have been easy to have imagined, in the ages of
Fable, that the god of the winds had permitted his subordinate agents to escape
from their den, and that they now rioted, in wantonness, across wastes, where
neither tree, nor work of man, nor mountain, nor obstacle of any sort opposed
itself to their gambols.
    Though nakedness, might, as usual, be given as the pervading character of
the spot, whither it is now necessary to transfer the scene of the tale, it was
not, entirely without the signs of human life. Amid the monotonous rolling of
the Prairies, a single, naked, and ragged rock arose, on the margin of a little
water course, which found its way, after winding a vast distance through the
plains, into one of the numerous tributaries of the Father of Rivers. A swale of
low land, lay near the base of the eminence, and as it was still fringed with a
thicket of alders and sumack, it bore the signs of having once nurtured a feeble
growth of wood. The trees themselves, had been transferred, however, to the
summit and crags of the neighboring rocks. On this elevation the signs of man to
which this allusion just made applies were to be found.
    Seen from beneath, there were visible a breast-work of logs and stones,
intermingled in such a manner as to save all unnecessary labour, a few low roofs
made of bark and boughs of trees, an occasional barrier, constructed like the
defences on the summit, and placed on such points of the acclivity as were
easier of approach than the general face of the eminence, and a little dwelling
of cloth, perched on the apex of a small pyramid that shot up, on one angle of
the rock, the white covering of which glimmered from a distance like a spot of
snow, or to make the simile more suitable to the rest of the subject, like a
spotless and carefully guarded standard, which was to be protected by the
dearest blood of those who defended the citadel beneath. It is hardly necessary
to add that this rude and characteristic fortress was the place, where
