“When day broke upon the Apalaches, we were already far away. Great was my felicity on finding myself again in solitude with Atala—with Atala my deliverer, with Atala who was giving herself to me for ever! Words failed my tongue. I fell on my knees, and said to the daughter of Simaghan: ‘Men are but little; but when the genii visit them, they are nothing at all. You are a genius; you have visited me, and I cannot speak before you.’ Atala offered me her hand with a smile: ‘I am obliged to follow you,’ she said, ‘since you will not fly without me. During the night I seduced the jungler with presents, I intoxicated your executioners with essence of fire, * and I risked my life for you, because you had given yours for me. Yes, young idolator!’ she added, with an accent that alarmed me, ‘the sacrifice will be reciprocal.’
“Atala gave me the weapons she had had the precaution to bring, and then she dressed my wound. Whilst wiping it with a papaya-leaf, she wetted it with her tears. ‘It is a balm,’ I said to her, ‘that you are dropping on my arm.’ ‘I am rather afraid that it may be a poison,’ she replied. She tore one of the coverings from her bosom, with which she made a first bandage that she fastened with a tress of lier hair.
“Intoxication, which lasts a long time upon savages, and is for them a species of malady, prevented them from pursuing us during the first few days. If they sought for us afterwards, it was probably in a westerly direction, as they must have thought we should make for the Mississippi; but we had taken our flight towards the fixed star, ** guiding ourselves by the moss on the trunks of the trees.
* Brandy.
** The north.
“We were not long in perceiving that we had gained but little by my deliverance. The desert now unrolled before us its immeasurable solitudes. Without experience in forest life, having lost our way, and walking on at hazard, what was to become of us? Often, while gazing upon Atala, I remembered the ancient story of Agar, that Lopez had given me to read, and which happened in the desert of Beersheba a long time ago, when men lived to three times the age of the oak.
“Atala made me a cloak out of some ash-bark, and she also embroidered me a pair of musk rat skin moccasins with porcupine’s hair. In my turn, I did all in my power to ornament her attire. First of all, I placed upon her head a crown of those blue mallows that crowded beneath our feet in the abandoned Indian cemeteries; then I made her necklaces of red azalea-berries; and after all I smiled in the contemplation of her wonderful beauty.
“When we encountered a river, we crossed it either on a raft or by swimming. Atala placed one of her hands upon my shoulder, and thus, like a pair of migratory swans, we traversed the solitary waves.
“During the great heat of the day we often sought shelter beneath the moss of the cedars. Nearly all the Floridan trees, especially the cedar and the oak, are covered with a white moss, which descends from their branches down to the very ground. At night-time, by moonlight, should you happen to see, in the open savannah, an isolated holm dressed in such drapery, you would imagine it to be a phantom dragging after it a number of long veils. The scene is not less picturesque by day, when a crowd of butterflies, brilliant insects, colibris, green paroquets, and blue jackdaws entangle themselves amongst the moss, and thus produce the effect of a piece of white woollen tapestry embroidered by some clever European workman with beautiful birds and sparkling insects.