the banks of the Ohio, in which I will be, myself, the first to forget
that on James River. And now, Edith, let us ride forward and meet yon gay
looking giant, whom, from his bustling demeanour, and fresh jerkin, I
judge to be the commander of the Station, the redoubtable Colonel Bruce
himself."

As he spoke the individual thus alluded to, separating himself from the
throng, galloped up to the speaker, and displayed a person which excited
the envy even of the manly looking Forrester. He was a man of at least
fifty years, but as hale as one of thirty, without a single gray hair to
deform the beauty of his raven locks, which fell down in masses nearly to
his shoulders. His stature was colossal, and the proportions of his frame
as just as they were gigantic; so that there was much in his appearance
of real native majesty. Nothing, in fact, could be well imagined more
truly striking and grand than his appearance, as seen at the first
glance; though the second revealed a lounging indifference of carriage,
amounting, at times, to something like awkwardness and uncouthness, which
a little detracted from the effect. Such men were oft-times, in those
days, sent from among the mountain counties of Virginia, to amaze the
lesser mortals of the plains, who regarded them as the genii of the
forest, and almost looked, as was said of the victor of the Kenhawa,[1]
himself of the race, to see the earth tremble beneath their footsteps.
With a spirit corresponding to his frame, he would have been the Nimrod
that he seemed. But nature had long before extinguished the race of
demigods; and the worthy Commander of the Station was not of them. He was
a mortal man, distinguished by little, save his exterior, from other
mortal men, and from the crowd of settlers who had followed him from the
fortress. He wore, it is true, a new and jaunty hunting-shirt of dressed
deer-skin, as yellow as gold, and fringed and furbelowed with shreds of
the same substance, dyed as red as blood-root could make them; but was