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Deep in their sands to bury the scattered bones of the mammoth.

Friends they sought and homes; and many, despairing, heart-broken,

Asked of the earth but a grave, and no longer a friend nor a fireside.

680 Written their history stands on tablets of stone in the churchyards.

Long among them was seen a maiden who waited and wandered,

Lowly and meek in spirit, and patiently suffering all things.

Fair was she and young; but, alas! before her extended,

Dreary and vast and silent, the desert of life, with its pathway

685 Marked by the graves of those who had sorrowed and suffered before her,

Passions long extinguished, and hopes long dead and abandoned,

As the emigrant's way o'er the Western desert is marked by

Camp-fires long consumed, and bones that bleach in the sunshine.

Something there was in her life incomplete, imperfect, unfinished;

690 As if a morning of June, with all its music and

sunshine,

Suddenly paused in the sky, and, fading, slowly descended

677. Bones of the mastodon, or mammoth, have been found scattered all over the territory of the United States and Canada, but the greatest number have been collected in the Salt Licks of Kentucky, and in the States of Ohio, Mississippi, Missouri. and Alabama.

Into the east again, from whence it late had

arisen.

Sometimes she lingered in towns, till, urged by

the fever within her,

Urged by a restless longing, the hunger and thirst of the spirit,

595 She would commence again her endless search and endeavor;

Sometimes in churchyards strayed, and gazed on the crosses and tombstones,

Sat by some nameless grave, and thought that perhaps in its bosom

He was already at rest, and she longed to slumber beside him.

Sometimes a rumor, a hearsay, an inarticulate

whisper,

700 Came with its airy hand to point and beckon her

forward.

Sometimes she spake with those who had seen her beloved and known him,

But it was long ago, in some far-off place or forgotten.

"Gabriel Lajeunesse!" they said; "Oh, yes! we have seen him.

He was with Basil the blacksmith, and both have

gone to the prairies;

705 Coureurs-des-bois are they, and famous hunters and trappers."

699. Observe the diminution in this line, by which one is led to the airy hand in the next.

705. The coureurs-des-bois formed a class of men very early in Canadian history, produced by the exigencies of the fur-trade. They were French by birth, but by long affiliation with the Indians and adoption of their customs had become half-civilized vagrants, whose chief vocation was conducting the canoes of he traders along the lakes and rivers of the interior. Bush

"Gabriel Lajeunesse!" said others; "Oh, yes! we have seen him.

He is a Voyageur in the lowlands of Louisiana.” Then would they say, "Dear child! why dream and wait for him longer?

Are there not other youths as fair as Gabriel? others

710 Who have hearts as tender and true, and spirits

as loyal?

Here is Baptiste Leblanc, the notary's son, who has loved thee

Many a tedious year; come, give him thy hand and be happy!

Thou art too fair to be left to braid St. Catherine's

tresses.

Then would Evangeline answer, serenely but

sadly, "I cannot!

715 Whither my heart has gone, there follows my hand, and not elsewhere.

For when the heart goes before, like a lamp, and illumines the pathway,

Many things are made clear, that else lie hidden in darkness."

Thereupon the priest, her friend and father-confessor,

rangers is the English equivalent. They played an important part in the Indian wars, but were nearly as lawless as the Indians themselves. The reader will find them frequently referred to in Parkman's histories, especially in The Conspiracy of Pontiac, The Discovery of the Great West, and Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV.

797. A voyageur is a river boatman, and is a term applied usually to Canadians.

713. St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Catherine of Siena were both celebrated for their vows of virginity. Hence the saying to braid St. Catherine's tresses, of one devoted to a single

Said, with a smile, "O daughter! thy God thus

speaketh within thee!

720 Talk not of wasted affection, affection never was

wasted;

If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters,

returning

Back to their springs, like the rain, shall fill them full of refreshment;

That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.

Patience; accomplish thy labor; accomplish thy work of affection!

725 Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike.

Therefore accomplish thy labor of love, till the heart is made godlike,

Purified, strengthened, perfected, and rendered more worthy of heaven!"

Cheered by the good man's words, Evangeline labored and waited.

Still in her heart she heard the funeral dirge of

the ocean,

730 But with its sound there was mingled a voice that whispered, Despair not!"

66

Thus did that poor soul wander in want and cheerless discomfort,

Bleeding, barefooted, over the shards and thorns of existence.

Let me essay, O Muse! to follow the wanderer's footsteps;

Not through each devious path, each changeful year of existence;

735 But as a traveller follows a streamlet's course through the valley:

Far from its margin at times, and seeing the gleam

of its water

Here and there, in some open space, and at intervals only;

Then drawing nearer its banks, through sylvan glooms that conceal it,

Though he behold it not, he can hear its contin

uous murmur;

740 Happy, at length, if he find a spot where it reaches

an outlet.

II.

It was the month of May. Far down the Beautiful River,

Past the Ohio shore and past the mouth of the

Wabash,

Into the golden stream of the broad and swift
Mississippi,

Floated a cumbrous boat, that was rowed by Aca

dian boatmen.

745 It was a band of exiles: a raft, as it were, from the shipwrecked

Nation, scattered along the coast, now floating together,

Bound by the bonds of a common belief and a

common misfortune;

Men and women and children, who, guided by

hope or by hearsay,

Sought for their kith and their kin among the few-acred farmers

750 On the Acadian coast, and the prairies of fair

Opelousas.

741. The Iroquois gave to this river the name of Ohio, or the Beautiful River, and La Salle, who was the first European to discover it, preserved the name so that it very early was transferred to maps.

750. Between the 1st of January and the 13th of May, 1765. about six hundred and fifty Acadians had arrived at Now

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