The lofty groves of pine frowned down in hearse-like gloom upon the mighty river, and the deep stillness of the night, broken alone by its hoarse wailings, filled my mind with sad forebodings—­alas! too prophetic of the future.  Keenly, for the first time, I felt that I was a stranger in a strange land; my heart yearned intensely for my absent home.  Home! the word had ceased to belong to my present—­it was doomed to live for ever in the past; for what emigrant ever regarded the country of his exile as his home?  To the land he has left, that name belongs for ever, and in no instance does he bestow it upon another.  “I have got a letter from home!” “I have seen a friend from home!” “I dreamt last night that I was at home!” are expressions of everyday occurrence, to prove that the heart acknowledges no other home than the land of its birth.

From these sad reveries I was roused by the hoarse notes of the bagpipe.  That well-known sound brought every Scotchman upon deck, and set every limb in motion on the decks of the other vessels.  Determined not to be outdone, our fiddlers took up the strain, and a lively contest ensued between the rival musicians, which continued during the greater part of the night.  The shouts of noisy revelry were in no way congenial to my feelings.  Nothing tends so much to increase our melancholy as merry music when the heart is sad; and I left the scene with eyes brimful of tears, and my mind painfully agitated by sorrowful recollections and vain regrets.

The strains we hear in foreign lands,
No echo from the heart can claim;
The chords are swept by strangers’ hands,
And kindle in the breast no flame,
Sweet though they be. 
No fond remembrance wakes to fling
Its hallowed influence o’er the chords;
As if a spirit touch’d the string,
Breathing, in soft harmonious words,
Deep melody.

The music of our native shore
A thousand lovely scenes endears;
In magic tones it murmurs o’er
The visions of our early years;—­
The hopes of youth;
It wreathes again the flowers we wreathed
In childhood’s bright, unclouded day;
It breathes again the vows we breathed,
At beauty’s shrine, when hearts were gay
And whisper’d truth;

It calls before our mental sight
Dear forms whose tuneful lips are mute,
Bright, sunny eyes long closed in night,
Warm hearts now silent as the lute
That charm’d our ears;
It thrills the breast with feelings deep,
Too deep for language to impart;
And bids the spirit joy and weep,
In tones that sink into the heart,
And melt in tears.

CHAPTER III

OUR JOURNEY UP THE COUNTRY

  Fly this plague-stricken spot!  The hot, foul air
  Is rank with pestilence—­the crowded marts
  And public ways, once populous with life,
  Are still and noisome as a churchyard vault;
  Aghast and shuddering, Nature holds her breath
  In abject fear, and feels at her strong heart
  The deadly pangs of death.