Towns, the towns of war and the towns of peace, of the strange dances and the stately ceremonials, the Green Corn Dance and the sacred Dance of the Serpent, of the "beloved bear grounds," where, instead of beef cattle, droves of bears were kept to furnish meat, of the great herds of horses and the smiling fields of grain?
Who would believe her if she told what Almayne had told her of the origin of this empire of the Muskogee; how, when the Spanish conquerors sacked Mexico and wrecked the magnificence of Montezuma, there were some among the great Emperor's subjectpeoples who would not submit to the foreign yoke; how they left their home in that distant country and marched northward and eastward, a whole nation of them, men, women, and children, seeking a new abode; how they met and fought many savage and warlike tribes in the land of the buffalo and the antelope; how at last, after long years of wandering in the western wilderness, they settled on the River Albamas, subdued all the nations that held the vast and smiling country, southward and westward of the Cherokee mountains and, teaching these nations something of the civilization of the Aztecs, bound them together into a powerful Indian empire known as the Confederacy of the Muskogee?
Who in England would believe her if she told of the ruling families of this barbaric empire, as proud ef their blood as any English earl—of the Family of the Wind, whose maidens were princesses; of the
