destroy life, and we, few and weak as we had become, were still exposed to

every other shaft with which his full quiver teemed. But pestilence was

absent from among them. For seven years it had had full sway upon earth;

she had trod every nook of our spacious globe; she had mingled with the

atmosphere, which as a cloak enwraps all our fellow-creatures--the

inhabitants of native Europe--the luxurious Asiatic--the swarthy

African and free American had been vanquished and destroyed by her. Her

barbarous tyranny came to its close here in the rocky vale of Chamounix.

Still recurring scenes of misery and pain, the fruits of this distemper,

made no more a part of our lives--the word plague no longer rung in our

ears--the aspect of plague incarnate in the human countenance no longer

appeared before our eyes. From this moment I saw plague no more. She

abdicated her throne, and despoiled herself of her imperial sceptre among

the ice rocks that surrounded us. She left solitude and silence co-heirs of

her kingdom.

My present feelings are so mingled with the past, that I cannot say whether

the knowledge of this change visited us, as we stood on this sterile spot.

It seems to me that it did; that a cloud seemed to pass from over us, that

a weight was taken from the air; that henceforth we breathed more freely,

and raised our heads with some portion of former liberty. Yet we did not

hope. We were impressed by the sentiment, that our race was run, but that

plague would not be our destroyer. The coming time was as a mighty river,

down which a charmed boat is driven, whose mortal steersman knows, that the

obvious peril is not the one he needs fear, yet that danger is nigh; and

558

The Last Man