Well do I recollect her, as she stood before us on that glorious evening, her features beaming with pleasure, as she witnessed the rapidity with which we emptied our plates.  How happy she would look when we praised her chickens, her honey, and her coffee; and then she would carve and cut, fill again our cups, and press upon us all the delicacies of the Far West borders, delicacies unknown in the old countries; such as fried beaver-tail, smoked tongue of the buffalo-calf, and (the gourmand’s dish par excellence) the Louisiana gombo.  Her coffee, too, was superb, as she was one of the few upon the continent of America who knew how to prepare it.

After our supper, the captain conducted us under the piazza attached to the building, where we found eight hammocks suspended, as white as snow.  There our host disinterred from a large bucket of ice several bottles of Madeira, which we sipped with great delight:  the more so as, for our cane pipes and cheap Cavendish, Finn substituted a box of genuine Havanna cazadores.  After our fatigues and starvation, it was more than comfortable—­it was delightful.  The doctor vowed he would become a planter, the parson asked if there were any widows in the neighbourhood, and the lawyers inquired if the planters of the vicinity were any way litigious.  By the bye, I have observed that Captain Finn was a celebrated character.  As we warmed with the Madere frappe a glace, we pressed him to relate some of his wild adventures, with which request he readily complied; for he loved to rehearse his former exploits, and it was not always that he could narrate them to so numerous an assembly.  As the style he employed could only be understood by individuals who have rambled upon the borders of the Far West, I will relate the little I remember in my own way, though I am conscious that the narrative must lose much when told by any one but Finn himself.

When quite an infant, he had been taken by the Indians and carried into the fastnesses of the West Virginian forests:  there he had been brought up till he was sixteen years old, when, during an Indian war, he was recaptured by a party of white men.  Who were his parents, he could never discover, and a kind Quaker took him into his house, gave him his name, and treated him as his own child, sending him first to school, and then to the Philadelphia college.  The young man, however, was little fit for the restrictions of a university; he would often escape and wander for days in the forests, until hunger would bring him home again.  At last, he returned to his adopted father, who was now satisfied that his thoughts were in the wilderness, and that, in the bustle of a large city and restraint of civilized life, he would not live, but linger on till he drooped and died.