doings of one Custaloga, an Indian brave, who, in the last chapter,

very obligingly washed the paint off his face and became Sir

Reginald Somebody-or-other; a trick I never forgave him. The idea

of a man being an Indian brave, and then giving that up to be a

baronet, was one which my mind rejected. It offended

verisimilitude, like the pretended anxiety of Robinson Crusoe and

others to escape from uninhabited islands.

But Ohio was not at all as I had pictured it. We were now on those

great plains which stretch unbroken to the Rocky Mountains. The

country was flat like Holland, but far from being dull. All

through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, or for as much as I saw

of them from the train and in my waking moments, it was rich and

various, and breathed an elegance peculiar to itself. The tall

corn pleased the eye; the trees were graceful in themselves, and

framed the plain into long, aerial vistas; and the clean, bright,

gardened townships spoke of country fare and pleasant summer

evenings on the stoop. It was a sort of flat paradise; but, I am

afraid, not unfrequented by the devil. That morning dawned with

such a freezing chill as I have rarely felt; a chill that was not

perhaps so measurable by instrument, as it struck home upon the

heart and seemed to travel with the blood. Day came in with a

shudder. White mists lay thinly over the surface of the plain, as

we see them more often on a lake; and though the sun had soon

dispersed and drunk them up, leaving an atmosphere of fever heat

and crystal pureness from horizon to horizon, the mists had still

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