Poor old Charlot Tayon! I have often puzzled myself to tell to what class of men he belonged by nature. Illiterate, uncultivated, ignorant, bred up on the outermost verge of civilized life, and spending all the prime of youth and manhood far beyond it, it was hard to tell whether this rude training had encouraged or retarded the growth of those qualities which made him in my eyes a remarkable man.

A native of upper Louisiana, he had entered, in early youth, into the service of the king of Spain as a private soldier. His corps was one of those whose duties condemned them to pass their days in the wild prairies, which, extending from the neighborhood of the Mississippi to the Rio del Norte, serve rather as the range than the habitation of small but numerous bands of Indians. Such a life is of course a life of toil, hardship, and danger. The qualities which fit a man to encounter these, are, under other circumstances, rewarded by fame. Even in scenes so remote, they do not always fail of a reward, which to him who receives it seems like fame. His few companions are his world, and their applause is to him the applause of the world. He perils every thing to win it, and, having fought his way to the head of a company of rangers, is as proud, and with good reason, as Wellington himself of all his honors, purchased at less expense of hardship or danger. It is thus that I account for the unequalled pride of this poor old man, associated as it was in his uncultivated mind with all that lofty courtesy which so surely accompanies a just sense of unquestioned and unquestionable merit.

I have said that he began life as a common soldier. A campaign of hard service was rewarded by the rank of fourth corporal. Another gave him the third place among these humble but important officers. In eight years he rose, step by step, and year by year, to the rank of first sergeant. Three more placed him, by the like regular gradations, at the head of his company.

As this was an independent corps, serving at a distance from the settlements, and only returning to them at long intervals, his station was one of great responsibility. This he assumed boldly, and exercised freely. Incapable of fear, he was not easily withheld from danger by a distant authority, and, relying on the brave man's maxim, "that success in war justifies a breach of orders," he made little scruple of disregarding his, whenever an opportunity of striking a blow presented itself. On some such occasion he incurred the displeasure of his immediate superior, the commandant at St. Charles. To this worthy, the success which exposed the impolicy of his own cautious prudence, was by no means a justification for disobedience. He accordingly recalled Tayon, imprisoned him, and sent him in chains to New Orleans.

Here the history of his imputed offence was so creditable to him, and the bearing of the rude soldier so forcibly struck the intendant, that his persecutor was deposed, and the prisoner returned in triumph, bearing with him a commission as commandant of the post.

This was, in his estimation, the acmé of greatness to a subject. Of the unapproachable majesty of the "King his master," as he delighted to call him, he might have formed some such conception as we have of angelic natures. But among mere men of common mould, he had seen nothing, until his forced journey to New Orleans, and had perhaps never imagined any thing above the dignity that encircled the commandant at St. Charles.

There is nothing strange in this. An officer at once judicial and executive, supreme in both capacities, always acting in person, and enforcing his authority by the summary processes of despotism, is an awful personage in his province. Though but a king of Liliput, he is a king to Liliputians, and especially to himself. Such was Charlot Tayon in his own estimation; he truly "bore him like a king," and when the throne of his power was removed from under him, he lost nothing of majesty in his fall. He was neither Dionysius at Corinth, nor Bonaparte at St. Helena. He was neither familiar, nor peevish, nor querulous, but sat himself down, in quiet poverty, in a cottage on the edge of the village over which he had reigned.

I saw him but seldom, but always delighted to converse with him. I found him uniformly affable, courteous and communicative. Though too self-respectful to talk gratuitously about himself, a little address alone was necessary to make him do so. He spoke not a word of English, but though illiterate, (for he could not read) his French was remarkably pure and euphonical. French has often seemed to me the appropriate language for monkeys. In his mouth it was the language of a man. Speaking slowly, deliberately, and calmly, in a strong, stern, sustained tone, with a countenance which bore no trace even of a by-gone smile, there was more to strike the ear, and awaken the imagination, in his manner, than in that of any man I ever saw. The tout ensemble spoke an ever present, deep, but proud and uncomplaining sense of wrong unutterable and irreparable. His figure, except on horseback, was awkward and ungainly. He was very old, and moved with difficulty. His short legs and arms, his broad bony hands, and his huge Roman nose, reminded me always of the legs, claws, and beak of a paroquet. His features, however, were not bad, though harsh. A deep-set dark grey eye surmounted by a shaggy brow, and a mouth firmly compressed and flat, were in perfect keeping with the rest of his face, and in character with the man. His dress was uniformly a blue cotton hunting shirt and trowsers, with moccasins on his feet, and a blue cotton handkerchief tied on his head in what is called the French fashion, with the ends hanging far down his back. In this garb his centaur figure, mounted on the back of a wild horse, was certainly one of the most picturesque I ever saw.

I once drew from him a sort of sketch of his life. It was little more than a confirmation of what I had heard from others. This I have already mentioned. But his manner, and the ideas which escaped from him, gave me more insight into his character. His was the first example I had ever seen of loyalty, not originating in personal attachment, wholly uninfluenced by personal considerations, adopted as a principle, but cherished into a passion. I doubt if he knew whether the king he served was king of France or of Spain, and am very sure that he knew no difference between Charles 3d, Charles 4th, and Ferdinand. Whoever he was, he was "Le Roi mon maitre." As such he always spoke of him to the last, owning no other allegiance, acknowledging no other political obligation but the will and pleasure of the "king his master." Was he therefore malcontent?—just the reverse. "The king my master laid his commands upon me, to deliver up the post which he had done me the honor to place under my authority, to an officer appointed to receive it on behalf of the government of the United States; and I obeyed him. He gave me to understand at the same time that it was his pleasure that I and my people should submit to the authority of the United States, and conform to their laws, and I have obeyed him. You see me quietly acquiescing in the new order of things, and endeavoring in all things to regulate myself by your laws; and I do so, because the king my master has commanded it."

There was nothing in his manner of saying this, betokening that restiveness with which men submit to what they cannot help. He seemed merely to find a satisfaction in rehearsing the principles by which he had always professed to be governed, and contemplating the conformity between these and his actions.