voice continued to regard him as a traitor. Failing to convict the principal, the numerous confederates of Burr were never brought to trial, and were discharged from custody. After his trial, Burr went abroad, virtually a banished man.'" He was still full of his schemes against Mexico, and, unsuccessfully, attempted to enlist England, and then France, in these projects. Here his funds failed. He had no friends to apply to, and was forced to borrow on one occasion, a couple of sous from a cigar woman, on the corner of the street. At last, he returned to New York, but in how different a guise from the days of his glory! No cannon thundered at his coming; no crowd thronged along the quay. Men gazed suspiciously upon him, as he walked along, or crossed the street to avoid him, as one having the pestilence. But he was not, he thought, wholly destitute. His daughter, who devotedly clung to him through all his trials, still lived; his heart yearned to clasp her to his bosom. She left Charleston, South Carolina, accordingly, to meet him. But although more than thirty years have elapsed, no tidings of the pilot boat, on which she sailed, have ever been received. Weeks grew into months, and months glided into years, but her father and husband watched in vain for her coming. Whether the vessel perished by conflagration-whether it foundered in a gale, or whether it was taken by pirates, and all on board murdered, will never be known until the great day, when the sea shall give up its dead. It is said that this blow broke the heart of Burr, and that, though in public he maintained a prond equanimity, in private, tears forced themselves down his furrowed cheeks. He lived thirty years after this event; but in his own words, "felt severed from the human race." He had neither brother nor sister, nor lineal descendant. No man ever called him by the endearing name of friend. The weight of fourscore years was on his brow. He was racked by disease. At last death, so long desired, came, but, it is said, in a miserable lodging and alone. Was there ever such a retribution? Scarcely less melancholy was the fate of his principal victim, Herman Blannerhasset. This gentleman was born in England, of Irish parents, in 1767, and was educated for the bar. He married Miss Adeline Agnew, a grand-daughter of the General Agnew, who was with Wolfe at Quebec. She was a lady of fine accomplishments, of great personal beauty, and fully merited the celebrated encomium of Wirt. Strongly imbued with republican principles, Blannerhasset emigrated to the United States, and commenced improvements about the year 1798, upon the beautiful island which bears his name, where he reared a mansion which became the abode of elegant hospitality. He was a fine scholar, and refined in taste and manners. Possessing an ample fortune, a beautiful and accomplished wife, and children just budding into life, he seemed surrounded with everything which can make existence desirable and happy. In 1805, Aaron Burr sailing down the Ohio landed, uninvited, on the island, where he was received with frank hospitality. He again visited the island, and enticed Blannerhasset into his plans. When the Virginia militia took possession of the island in 1806, the mob spirit ran riot, and great injury was done to the grounds, and the dwelling, and its furniture. In 1811, the work of devastation was completed by a fire, which destroyed the mansion. At the time of the trial of Burr, Blannerhasset was arrested, and placed in the penitentiary at Richmond. When he was set at liberty, he was nearly ruined in fortune by the advances he had made to Burr. He then settled on a cotton plantation in Mississippi, and there was a prospect of his being enabled to regain his lost fortune; but the war of 1812 broke out, and cotton falling to a merely nominal price, and his numerous creditors pressing upon him, he was about to despair, when an old friend, the acting governor of Canada, hearing of his critical situation, offered him a judgeship in one of the provincial courts. He accordingly emigrated to Canada, and upon arriving there found that the capriciousness of the British ministry had removed his friend from office. He was now hopelessly cast upon the world, at an advanced age, without health and energy, and almost entirely destitute. As a last resort, he sailed for Europe to prosecute a reversionary claim, still existing in Ireland, regarded by him with indifference in the days of his affluence. Through the influence of friends also, he hoped to obtain an office under the English government, by which he might more readily obtain the means of conducting his suit. He applied for an office to Lord Anglesey, but he coldly repelled the solicitations of his old schoolmate. His plans all frustrated, he removed to the island of Guernsey, where, in 1831, wearied with the turmoil of life, he sank to his eternal rest, in the sixty-third year of his age. His faithful wife returned to the United States to procure indemnity from Congress for spoliations upon their property by the militia. But before the claim could be considered, she died in abject poverty, in an humble abode in the city of New York. In her last hours, she was surrounded by strangers, and the recipient of their charity; and her remains were escorted to their final restingplace, by some humble Irish females. THE GREAT PRAIRIE WILDERNESS. WHAT has been termed the Great Prairie Wilderness is the vast territory lying between the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, and the Upper Mississippi, on the east, and the Black Hills and the eastern range of the Rocky and the Cordillera Moun tains on the west. About a thousand miles of longitude and near two thousand miles of latitude, equaling the combined area of several of the powerful empires of Europe, and that, too, of an almost continuous plain. The sublime Prairie Wilderness! The portion of this vast region, two hundred miles in width, along the coast of Texas and the frontier of Lousiana, Arkansas, Missouri, and that lying within the same distance of the Upper Mississippi in Iowa, possesses a rich, deep alluvial soil, capable of producing the most abundant crops of the grains, vegetables, etc., that grow in such latitudes. Nebraska and Kansas comprise a large part of this portion. Another portion, lying west of the irregular western line of that just described, five hundred miles in width, extending from the mouth of St. Peters or Minnesota River to the Rio del Norte, is an almost unbroken plain destitute of trees, save here and there one scattered at intervals for many miles along the banks of the streams. The soil, except the intervals of some of the rivers, is composed of coarse sand and clay, so thin and hard that it is diffi cult for travelers to penetrate it with the stakes they carry with them wherewithal to fasten their animals or spread their tents. Nevertheless it is covered thickly with an extremely nutritious grass peculiar to this region of country, the blades of which are wiry and about two inches in height. The remainder of the Great Wilderness, lying three hundred miles in width along the eastern base of the Black Hills and that part of the Rocky Mountains between the Platte and the Arkansas and the Cordilleras range east of the Rio del Norte, is the arid waste usually called the Great American Desert. Its soil is composed of dark gravel mixed with sand. Some small portions of it, on the banks of the streams, are covered with tall prairie and bunch grass, others with wild wormwood; but even these kinds of vegetation decrease and finally disappear as you approach the mountains. A scene of desolation scarcely equaled on the continent is this, when viewed in the dearth of midsummer from the bases of the hills. Above you rise in sublime confusion mass upon mass of shattered cliffs, through which are struggling the dark foliage of stinted shrub cedars, while below you spreads far and wide the burnt and arid desert, whose solemn silence is seldom broken by the tread of any other animal than the wolf or the starved and thirsty horse that bears the traveler across its wastes. The principal streams that intersect the Great Prairie Wilderness are the Colorado, the Brasos, Trinity, Red, Arkansas, Great Platte, and the Missouri. The latter is in many respects a noble stream. In the month of April, May, and June it is navigable for steamboats to the Great Falls; but the scarcity of water during the remainder of the year, the scarcity of wood and coal along its banks, its rapid current, its winding course, its falling banks, the timber imbedded in its channel, and its constantly shifting sandbars will ever prevent its being extensively navigated. Above the mouth of the Little Missouri and in the tributaries there flowing into it, are said to be many charming and productive valleys separated from each other by secondary rocky ridges sparsely covered with evergreens; and high over all, far in the southwest, west, and northwest, tower in view the Rocky Mountains; whose inexhaustible magazines of snow and ice have for ages supplied these valleys with refreshing springs and those vast rivers with their tribute to the seas. Lewis and Clarke in their way to Oregon, in 1805, made the passage at the Great Falls of the Missouri thirteen miles, in which distance the water descended three hundred and fifty-two feet, the greatest pitch being ninety-eight feet. They ascended to the extreme head of navigation, making from the mouth of the Missouri, from whence they started, three thousand and ninety-six milesfour hundred and twenty-nine of which lay among the sublime crags and cliffs of the Rocky Mountains. The Great Platte, or Nebraska, has a course by its northern fork of about fifteen hundred miles, and by its southern somewhat more. During the summer and autumn it is too shallow to float even a canoe, and in winter is bound with ice. But it is of great value as the route of overland emigration to California and Oregon. Loaded wagons pass, without serious interruption, from the mouth of the Platte to navigable waters on the Columbia, in Oregon, and the Bay of San Francisco, in California. The Platte, therefore, when considered in relation to our intercourse with the habitable countries in the Western Ocean, assumes an unequaled importance among the streams of the Great Western Wilderness! But for it, it would be impossible for man or beast to travel those arid plains, destitute alike of wood, water, and grass, save what of each is found along its course. Upon the headwaters of the north fork, too, is the only way or opening in the Rocky Mountains at all practicable for a carriage road through them. That traversed by Lewis and Clarke is covered with perpetual snow; that near the passage of the south fork of the river is over high and nearly impassable precipices; and that farther south is and ever will be impassable for wheel carriages. But the Great Gap, or "the South Pass," nearly in a right line between the mouth of the Missouri and Fort Hall, on Clarke's River-the point near where the trails to California and Oregon diverge-seems designed by nature as the great gateway between the nations on the Atlantic and Pacific Seas. The Red River has a course of about fifteen hundred miles, and derives its name from the color of its waters, produced by a rich, red earth or marl in its banks far up in the Prairie Wilderness. So abundant is this in the waters, that during the spring freshets it leaves a deposit on the overflowed lands of half an inch in thickness. Three hundred miles from its mouth commences what is called the Raft, a covering formed by drift wood, which conceals the whole river for forty miles and is so thickly covered with the sediment of |