In the course of his awful narrative, he told us, that the noise which had so appalled him, as he lay among the blood-stained rocks, was indeed the acting of a new cruelty of the usurper.  After having witnessed the execution of his sentence on the eighteen citizens, whose asseverations he had determined not to believe, Nackee Khan immediately sent for a devout man, called Saied Hassan, who was considered the sage of the place, and, for his charities, greatly beloved by the people.  “This man,” said the Khan, “being a descendant of the Prophet, must know the truth, and will tell it me.  He shall find me those who can and will pay the money.”  But the answer given by the honest Saied being precisely the same with that of the innocent victims who had already perished, the tyrant’s fury knew no bounds, and, rising from his seat, he ordered the holy man to be rent asunder in his presence, and then thrown over the rock, to increase the monument of his vengeance below.

It was the tumult of this most dreadful execution, which occasioned the noise that drove the affrighted narrator to the shelter of any hole from the eye of merciless man.  But the cruel scene did not end here.  Even in the yet sensible ear of the Saied, expiring in agonies, his execrable murderer ordered that his wife and daughters should be given up to the soldiers; and that, in punishment of such universal rebellion in the town, the whole place should be razed to the ground.  But this last act of blood on a son of the Prophet cost the perpetrator his life.  For the soldiers themselves, and the nobles who had been partisans of the usurper, were so struck with horror at the sacrilegious murder, and appalled with the threatened guilt of violating women of the sacred family, that they believed a curse must follow the abettors of such a man.  The next step, in their minds, was to appease Heaven by the immolation of the offender; and, in the course of that very night, a band of his servants cut the cords of his tent, which, instantly falling in upon him, afforded them a secure opportunity of burying their poniards in his body.  The first strokes were followed by thousands.  So detested was the wretch, that in a few minutes his remains were hewn and torn to pieces.  It does not become men to lift the veil which lies over the whole doom of a ruthless murderer; but there is something in the last mortal yell of a tyrant, whether it be a Robespierre or a Nackee Khan, which sounds as if mingled with a dreadful echo from the eternal shore.

Sketches in Virginia.

The Rock Bridge is described by Mr. Jefferson, late President of the United States, as one of the most sublime of the productions of Nature.  It is on the ascent of a hill which seems to have been cloven through its length by some great convulsion of Nature.

Although the sides of the bridge are provided in some parts with a parapet of fixed rocks, yet few persons have resolution to walk to them, and look over into the abyss.  The passenger involuntarily falls on his hands, creeps to the parapet, and peeps over it.  Looking down from this height for the space of a minute, occasions a violent headache; and the view from beneath is delightful in the extreme, as much as that from above is exquisitely painful.