russet-colored boots expanded at the aperture and garnished with spurs reached high up the legs, and a small cut and thrust sword, suspended by a belt, which was also russet-colored, hung at his side.  The handle of the sword was exquisitely beautiful, worthy of being the work of Cellini himself.  It was mostly of massive gold, the hilt smooth and shining, and the guard embossed with a variety of elegant devices.  But the part which first arrested attention and attracted the most admiration was the head, whereupon was sculptured a gigantic honey-bee, with wings expanded, as if about to fly from its perch; the eyes were sparkling diamonds, the body was composed of different colored metals, in imitation of life—­and the whole so cunningly wrought, that it seemed a living bee about to mount into the air.  The man rode and looked as if not anticipating, and incapable of fearing danger, carelessly glancing round, while the noble animal he bestrode, as if he had caught the spirit of his rider, stepped high and gallantly along.  But in truth there was little or no danger, the white settlers being, at the time, at peace with the neighboring Indian tribes.

It was a mere bridle-path the horseman was following, which wound about in various directions, in order to avoid marshy ground, or trunks of trees, or other obstacles, and appeared to be perfectly familiar to the horse, who trotted on without any guidance from his rider.  As for the latter, as if to beguile the tediousness of the way, he would pat at one moment the neck of his dumb companion, and address a few words to him, and at the next, break out into snatches of song.  Thus he proceeded until he emerged from the woods, and an open space, the site of the future city of Boston, once the cornfields of warlike tribes, mysteriously removed by pestilence, in order as to the excited imaginations of the early settlers it seemed, to make room for the fugitives, lay spread before him.

The rider stopped his horse, and for some moments sat in silence gazing on the scene.  From the eminence, to whose top he had ridden, declined before him the sloping hills, on whose sides open cultivated spaces were interspersed with woods.  On the waters’ edge, for the most part, were scattered the houses of the colonists, the majority of them rude huts, made of unhewn logs, with here and there a frame building, or a brick or stone house of less humble pretensions, while beyond, rolled the sparkling waves of the bay, sprinkled with “a great company of islands, whose high cliffs shoulder out the boisterous seas,” as the old chronicler Wood expresses it, and rocking a few small vessels lying at anchor.  He who viewed the region that morning, must have had a brilliant imagination to dream of the magnificent cities destined to stud those coasts, and of the millions to fill those extensive forests within two hundred years.  Westward, indeed, the star of Empire had taken its way, and the wise men of the East were following its heavenly guidance; but who knew it then?