Osceola The Seminole

PREFACE.

The Historical Novel has ever maintained a high rank--perhaps the
highest--among works of fiction, for the reason that while it enchants
the senses, it improves the mind, conveying, under a most pleasing form,
much information which, perhaps, the reader would never have sought for
amid the dry records of the purely historic narrative.

This fact being conceded, it needs but little argument to prove that
those works are most interesting which treat of the facts and incidents
pertaining to our own history, and of a date which is yet fresh in the
memory of the reader.

To this class of books pre-eminently belongs the volume which is here
submitted to the American reader, from the pen of a writer who has
proved himself unsurpassed in the field which he has, by his various
works, made peculiarly his own.

The brief but heroic struggle of the celebrated Chief, Osceola, forms
the groundwork of a narrative which is equal, if not superior, to any of
Mr Reid's former productions; and while the reader's patriotism cannot
fail to be gratified at the result, his sympathy is, at the same time,
awakened for the manly struggles and untimely fate of the gallant
spirit, who fought so nobly for the freedom of his red brethren and the
preservation of their cherished hunting-grounds.



CHAPTER ONE.

THE FLOWERY LAND.

Linda Florida! fair land of flowers!

Thus hailed thee the bold Spanish adventurer, as standing upon the prow
of his caravel, he first caught sight of thy shores.

It was upon the Sunday of Palms--the festival of the flowers--and the
devout Castilian beheld in thee a fit emblem of the day. Under the
influence of a pious thought, he gave thee its name, and well deservedst
thou the proud appellation.

That was three hundred years ago. Three full cycles have rolled past,
since the hour of thy baptismal ceremony; but the title becomes thee as
ever. Thy floral bloom is as bright at this hour as when Leon landed
upon thy shores--ay, bright as when the breath of God first called thee
into being.