Travel by Water and Road

"OCEANA: High on a craggy rock an Indian stood, with sinewy arm and eye that pierced the glen. His bowstring drawn to wing a second death, his robe of fur was o'er his shoulder thrown, and o'er his long, dark hair an eagle's plume waved in the breeze, a feathery diadem. Firmly he stood upon the jutting height, as if a sculptor's hand had carved him there. With awe I gazed as on the cliff he turned -- the grandest model of a mighty man.
WALTER: 'Twas Haups' great chieftain, Metamora called; our people love him not, nor is it strange; he stands between them and extended sway, ready alike with words of power to urge, or gleaming weapons to force his princely dues…
OCEANA: Behold his dread encounter with a wolf. His vanquished foe with mighty arm he hurls down the steep height where mortal never trod…
WALTER: (at Metamora's exit) 'Tis Metamora, the noble sachem of a valiant race -- the white man's dread, the Wampanoag's hope."
— John Augustus Stone, Metamora (1829) Act I, sc. 1

For many years, Forrest starred as Metamora, the leader forced to abandon his land to save his people. The power of Forrest's acting was analyzed by T. S. Fay, writing from London for the The New-York Mirror (Dec. 10, 1836) "From our Foreign Correspondents: Forrest in London":
"Forrest is achieving an English as well as an American immortality… the British criticks [sic] deal out their commendations with no timid hands. They are not afraid to praise too much any more than too little. 'Tremendous power,' 'startling scenes,' 'a continual blaze of genius,' 'a rough but powerful energy that wins upon the audience as they become better acquainted with it.' These and other equally unequivocal and enthsiastick [sic] phrases go the rounds of the newspapers, from the leading journals downward. His simplicity, sincerity and energy are particularly liked, and they think he possesses nature unenervated [sic] by artifice; in short, that his style resembles a full and bounding river, sweeping on its course through an American forest and carrying away the obstacles which lie in its path…"