deur, the solemnity of the inimitable scene calmed not her agonized spirit. Every bowl of the angry tempest, -every glow of the scathed forest-tree threw a deeper gloominess on her anticipations, and told in accents of despair, that her friends her all were in the extremity of peril. Perhaps, the power of a woman's affections, the yearnings of maternal tenderness are never felt, with such vital warmth as when a child is exposed to the fury of a tempest. Count the horrors of a drear lonesomeness! remember the impassioned love for an only child, the absence of an affectionate husband; remove every lenitive cheering the Christian's heart in the day of rebuke, and then there will be a faint picture of those bitter forebodings experienced by this Indian female. Very soon, the rain fell in such unvarying and impetuous streams, that it seemed as if desolation's finger would be left alone to mark the ravages. Convulsed and maddened by fiercely driven winds, the Yalo-Busha's current rose and widened and hastened onward with fearful velocity. Over these disturbed waters and a low prairie ground, which the swellings of the Yalo-Busha very often inundated, lay the path of the Indian and his daughter.

The little girl, a sweet youth of ten years, for twenty moons, had been an inmate of a mission family. There her playful sprightliness had not wasted its strength in roaming the woods, or watching the success of the sav age's fish-line. There her beautifully coloured eyes had been directed to other objects than the tomahawk's crimson edge, or the bloody mementos of relentless warfare. On that consecrated spot, her young bosom first panted for the delights of civilized society, first reciproeated with the smile of affection, the tenderness of the white lady's instruction. Above all, she was there taught, that her soul would live, after the ray of sun-light had ceased to play in the waters of her father's land. When told of the kindness of a Saviour, penitential tears stood in her eye-silent evidence, that a child, born in the depths of Mississippi's wilds, would become a sparkling gem in the crown of imperishable glory.

After having given proofs of extraordinary mental ability, and a most winning sweetness of disposition, her father, a chief of considerable rank, arrived at the mission house, for the purpose of taking his daughter home on a

visit. She manifested much pleasure at seeing him, gave a feeling adieu to her associates and instructors, and accompanied her father towards the setting sun. The greater part of their journey was through a thickly wooded forest, pervious only to the savage.

The awful commingling of light and shade, the lonely ray ever and anon revealing the mouldered leaf or the shadowed evergreen, the pensive echo from the note of the wood-land bird, and the purling streamlet displaying on its surface the fallen beauties of a hundred different trees-all these disclose one source, whence the son of nature has drawn the wildness of his charming descriptions. Here, my Narowna, said the enraptured Indian, was the hunting ground of your fathers. Here was the nimble deer struck by the flying arrows of the red hunter. Under these shades was the bloody hatchet buried, and the smoke of the pipe of peace told the good Spirit, that his children were happy. But the sun has drowned those days in the deep ocean. Never more will these high trees carry up to the land of souls the song of triumph. The white men are driving the Indians far beyond the river of the west. My father, said Narowna, her little eyes kindling into more than mortal brightness, the star of peace is rising on our land. Oh praise the great Spirit, the white men are not all enemies of the Indians. A journey of many moons, through the woods, and over the rivers, the good missionaries are come to teach us the way of life. In their talk to us, they said that Jesus Christ a great many moons ago came down from the country of the blessed to take away the thorns and briers from the path of the warrior. He brought into this world the book of truth. In that book there is much talk about heaven—a glorious place, where all men, who have repented of their sins and believed in the Saviour, will go as soon their bodies are cold and dead. Hark! the voice of the great Father.

The thunder more and more audible, now seemed to rock the very ground. The darkness, as they emerged from the thick wood to the prairie, was scareely less appalling, for the cloud was rolling its black front over the whole sky. ARROWFOOT.

[To be Continued.]

ELEMENTS OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY.

THE RAINBOW,

Reflected from yon eastern cleuc

Bestriding earth, the grand etherial bow
Shoots up immense? and every hue unfolds,
In fair proportion, running from the red
To where the vi'let fades into the sky.
Here, awful Newton, the dissolving clouds
Form, fronting on the sun, thy shadowy prism;
And, to the sage instructed eye, unfold

The various twine of light, by thee disclosed,

From the white, mingling maze.-THOMSON.

THE meteor called the RAINBOW is one of the most beautiful objects in nature. It never appears but when the spectator is situated between the sun and a shower.

This appearance is formed by rays of light entering the upper part of the drops of falling rain, suffering one -refraction there, which throws them upon the back part of the inner surface of the drops, from whence they are reflected to the bottom of these drops, and then again they are refracted directly to the eye of the spectator. Two refractions and one reflection of the sun's rays, in falling water, will always produce the appearance of the rainbow to a spectator with his back to the sun, when the falling water is sufficiently elevated to bring the second refraction to his organs of vision.

This theory of the rainbow accounts for its appearing to recede when we advance, and advance when we recede. It keeps a position having the same angle of incidence, and therefore shifts its situation as the eye of the spectator does. This will likewise account for the bow, as being higher or lower in the atmosphere, according as the sun is lower or higher in the horizon, and the nearer the sun is to the horizon the higher the meteor will appear. But it is obvious that except the spectator be very highly elevated above the earth, it will never appear higher than half a circle. As the sun is elevated above the horizon the are of the circle will be diminished, till it could no longer exist.

1

Besides, the fact that the rainbow is usually attended with an outer meteor, in which the colours are reversed in their order from the primary bow; some remarkable bows have been observed in which several series of colours were visible, making the bow much broader than usual. We have ourselves witnessed phenomena in the atmosphere connected with the subject of refraction and reflection of the sun's rays, which we intend to notice some other time.

A phenomenon is sometimes observed in a much agitated sea which is called a marine rainbow. It is occasioned by he wind's raising water from the surface of the waves, which, as it ascends, refracts and reflects the rays of the sun. We have witnessed a similar appearance when a violent wind was blowing directly against a large cascade. And the spray from large cataracts is always attended with the appearance of a rainbow, when the sun and the spectator are in favourable circumstances.

There have sometimes been witnessed lunar bows, in which all the colours of the iris were visible, but much fainter. In childhood, we once witnessed a lunar bow uncommonly vivid in its colours. The full moon was just risen above the eastern horizon. North of west a thunder gust of uncommon blackness was discharging torrents of rain as it continued to rise. The palest lightning incessantly played on its surface, with a gloom which seemed to portend impending destruction. the appearance of the bow in the cloud, might be recognised as the pledge of covenant faithfulness in God.

But

Besides, it served to direct the eye of faith to that throne which is ever surrounded with the bow of redeeming covenant love and mercy. O how delightful to hope that when these eyes shall no more see the sun, or his refracted or reflected rays, the pious soul will forever look on the rays of the Sun of righteousness, and behold covenant love in vivid colours, painted on those dark tempests which forever hang over the regions of impeni tent, unpardoned guilt.

EXTRACTS ON THE UNUSUAL REFRACTION OF THE ATMOSPHERE.

ALTHOUGH the phenomena of refraction have been often observed by astronomers and navigators, yet they do not seem to have attracted particular notice till the year 1797. The unusual elevation of coasts, mountains, and ships, have been long known under the name of looming; and the same phenomena, when accompanied with inverted images, have been distinguished in France by the name of the Mirage.

In a paper printed in the Philosophical Transactions for 1797, Mr. Huddart describes several examples of powerful atmospherical refraction, in consequence of which objects near the horizon appeared inverted, and the horizon itself either elevated or depressed. Mr. Huddart seems to have been the first who described an inverted image beneath the real object; and he accounts for this, and other phenomena of elevation, by supposing that, in consequence of the evaporation of the water, the refractive power of the air is not greatest at the sur face of the sea, but at some distance above it, increasing gradually from the surface of the sea to a line which he calls the line of maximum density, and thence diminishing gradually upward ad infinitum. He then shews, that, in passing through such a medium, the rays of light would move in curve lines, convex upwards when they passed above the line of maximum density, and convex downwards when they passed below the line of maximum density. Hence, two pencils from the object will arrive at the eye, which will produce an inverted image of the object.

In the year 1798, the Rev Dr. Vince of Cambridge made a series of interesting observations at Ramsgate on the unusual refraction of the atmosphere. He made his observations with a terrestrial telescope magnifying between thirty and forty times, when the height of the eye was about twenty-five feet above the surface of the sea : Sometimes the height of the eye was eighty feet, but no variation in the phenomena seemed to arise from this cause. On the 1st of August between four and eight o'clock, P. M. he saw the topmasts of a ship. "At the