“Old prophecies foretell our fall at hand,
When bearded men in floating castles land.”
The sagamore, as he gazed on the Plymouth settlement, stood grief-stricken to think that his lease of ages of the forests approached its end. He seemed to see in the recent plague a grant of the land to another race, engrossed by the hand of the Great Spirit himself. That rifled burial-mound of the Wampanoags, in which the Pilgrims found their seed-corn, was typical; it was the new tenant entering upon the estate, taking possession in the name of God, and for the common good. Yet
“Who shall deem the spot unblessed
Where Nature’s younger children rest,
Lulled on their sorrowing mother’s breast?
Deem ye that mother loveth less
These bronzed forms of the wilderness
She foldeth in her long caress?