The party had taken their places around a platter of venison steaks, which served for the common use, and the discourse naturally partook of the characters of the different individuals that composed it. The Indians were silent and industrious, the appetite of the aboriginal American for venison being seemingly inappeasable, while the two white men were communicative and discursive, each of the latter being garrulous and opinionated in his way. But as the dialogue will serve to put the reader in possession of certain facts that may render the succeeding narrative more clear, it will be well to record it.

"There must be satisfaction in this life of yours, no doubt, Mr. Pathfinder," continued Cap, when the hunger of the travellers was so far appeased that they began to pick and choose among the savoury morsels; "it has some of the chances and luck that we seamen like, and if ours is all water, yours is all land."

"Nay, we have water too, in our journeyings and marches," returned his white companion: "we border-men handle the paddle and the spear, almost as much as the rifle and the hunting-knife."

"Ay; but do you handle the brace and the bow-line; the wheel and the lead-line; the reef-point and the top-rope? The paddle is a good thing, out of doubt, in a canoe, but of what use is it in the ship?"

བུ་ ཨ་༡། ༢་ ཞི་ མི་

"Nay, I respect all men in their callings, and I can believe the things you mention have their uses. One, who has lived, like myself, in company with many tribes, understands differences in usages. The paint of a Mingo is not the paint of a Delaware; and he who should expect to see a warrior in the dress of a squaw, might be disappointed. I am not yet very old, but I have lived in the woods, and have some acquaintance with human natur'. I never believed much in the learning of them that dwell in towns, for I never yet met with one that had an eye for a rifle, or a trail."

"That's my manner of reasoning, Master Pathfinder, to a yarn. Walking about streets, going to church of Sundays, and hearing serinons, never yet made a man of a human being. Send the boy out upon the broad ocean, if you wish to open his eyes, and let him look upon foreign nations, or, what I call the face of natur', if you wish him to understand

his own character. Now, there is my brother-in-law, the serjeant, he is as good a fellow as ever broke a biscuit, in his way; but what is he, after all? why, nothing but a soldier. A serjeant, to be sure, but that is a sort of a soldier, you know. When he wished to marry poor Bridget, my sister, I told the girl what he was, as in duty bound, and what she might expect from such a husband, but you know how it is with girls when their minds are jammed by an inclination. It is true, the serjeant has risen in his calling, and they say he is an important man at the fort; but his poor wife has not lived to see it all, for she has now been dead these fourteen years.'

"A soldier's calling is an honourable calling, provided he has fi't only on the side of right," returned the Pathfinder, "and as the Frenchers are always wrong, and His Sacred Majesty and these colonies are always right, I take it the serjeant has a quiet conscience, as well as a good character I have never slept more sweetly than when I have fi't the Mingos, though it is the law with me to fight always like a white man, and never like an Indian. The Sarpent, here has his fashions, and I have mine; and yet have we fou❜t side by side, these many years, without either's thinking a hard thought consarning the other's ways. I tell him there is but one heaven and one hell, notwithstanding his traditions though there are many paths to both."

"That is rational, and he is bound to believe you, though I fancy most of the roads to the last, are on dry land. The sea is what my poor sister, Bridget, use to call a 'purifying place,' and one is out of the way of temptation when out of sight of land. I doubt if as much can be said in favour of your lakes, up hereaway."

“That towns and settlements lead to sin, I will allow; but our lakes are bordered by the forests, and one is every day called upon to worship God, in such a temple. That mer. are not always the same, even in the wilderness, I must admit, for the difference between a Mingo and a Delaware, is as plain to be seen as the difference between the sun and the moon. I am glad, friend Cap, that we have met, however, if it be only that you may tell the Big Sarpent, here. that there are lakes in which the water is salt. We have been pretty much of one mind since our acquaintance began,

and if the Mohican has only half the faith in me that I have in him, he believes all that I have told him, touching the white men's ways and natur's laws; but, it has always seemed to me that none of the red-skins have given as free a belief, as an honest man likes, to the accounts of the Big Salt Lakes, and to that of there being rivers that flow up stream."

"This comes of getting things wrong end foremost,' answered Cap, with a condescending nod. "You have thought of your lakes and rifts, as the ship, and of the ocean and the tides, as the boat. Neither Arrowhead nor the Serpent need doubt what you have said concerning both, though I confess, myself, to some difficulty in swallowing the tale about there being inland seas, at all, and still more that there is any sea of fresh water. I have come this long journey, as much to satisfy my own eyes and palate concerning these facts, as to oblige the serjeant and Magnet, though the first was my sister's husband, and I love the last like a child."

"You are wrong-you are wrong, friend Cap, very wrong to distrust the power of God, in any thing," returned Pathfinder, earnestly. "They that live in the settlements and the towns get to have confined and unjust opinions consarning the might of His hand, but we who pass our time, in his very presence, as it might be, see things differentlyI mean such of us as have white natur's. A red-skin has his notions, and it is right that it should be so, and if they are not exactly the same as a Christian white man's, there is no harm in it. Still there are matters that belong altogether to the ordering of God's Providence, and these salt and fresh water lakes are some of them. I do not pretend to account for these things, but I think it the duty of all to believe in them. For my part, I am one of them who think that the same hand which made the sweet water, can make the salt." "Hold on there, Master Pathfinder," interrupted Cap, not without some heat; "in the way of a proper and manly faith, I will turn my back on no one, when afloat. Although more accustomed to make all snug aloft, and to show the proper canvass, than to pray, when the hurricane comes, I know that we are but helpless mortals at times, and I hope I pay reverence where reverence is due. All I mean to say, and that is rather insinuated than said, is this; which is, as you all

know, simply an intimation that, being accustomed to see water in large bodies salt, I should like to taste it, before I can believe it to be fresh."

"God has given the salt lick to the deer, and he has given to man, red-skin and white, the delicious spring at which to slake his thirst. It is unreasonable to think that he may not have given lakes of pure water to the west, and lakes of impure water to the east."

Cap was awed, in spite of his overweening dogmatism, by the earnest simplicity of the Pathfinder, though he did not relish the idea of believing a fact which, for many years, he had pertinaciously insisted could not be true. Unwilling to give up the point, and, at the same time, unable to maintain it against a reasoning to which he was unaccustomed, and which possessed equally the force of truth, faith, and probability, he was glad to get rid of the subject by evasion.

"Well, well, friend Pathfinder," he said, "we will nipper the argument where it is; and, as the serjeant has sent you to give us pilotage to this same lake, we can try the water when we once reach it. Only mark my words—I do not say that it may not be fresh on the surface, the Atlantic is sometimes fresh on the surface, near the mouths of great rivers; but, rely on it, I shall show yo: a way of tasting the water many fathoms deep, of which you never dreamed; and then we shall know more about it."

The guide seemed content to let the matter rest, and the conversation changed.

"We are not over-conceited concerning our gifts," observed the Pathfinder after a short pause, "and well know that such as live in the towns, and near the sea

66

On the sea," interrupted Cap.

"On the sea, if you wish it, friend, have opportunities tha! do not befal us of the wilderness. Still, we know our owr. callings, and they are what I consider natural callings, and are not parvarted by vanity and wantonness. Now, my gifts are with the rifle, and on a trail, and in the way of game and scouting; for, though I can use the spear and the paddle, I pride not myself on either. The youth, Jasper, there, who is discoursing with the serjeant's daughter, is a different creatur', for he may be said to breathe the water, as it might be, like a fish. The Indians and Frenchers of the north

shore call him Eau-douce, on account of his gifts in this particular. He is better at the oar and the rope too, than in making fires on a trail."

"There must be something about these gifts of which you speak, after all," said Cap. "Now this fire, I will acknow. ledge, has overlaid all my seamanship. Arrowhead, there, said the smoke came from a pale-face's fire, and that is a piece of philosophy that I hold to be equal to steering in a dark night by the edges of the scud."

"It's no great secret-it's no great secret," returned Pathfinder, laughing with great inward glee, though habitual caution prevented the emission of any noise. "Nothing is easier to us who pass our time in the great school of Providence, than to larn its lessons. We should be as useless on a trail, or in carrying tidings through the wilderness, as so many woodchucks, did we not soon come to a knowledge of these niceties. Eau-douce, as we call him, is so fond of the water, that he gathered a damp stick or two for our fire, and there are plenty of them, as well as those that are thoroughly dried, lying scattered about; and wet will bring dark smoke, as I suppose even you followers of the sea must know. It's no great secret-it's no great secret-though all is mystery to such as doesn't study the Lord and his mighty ways with humility and thankfulness."

"That must be a keen eye of Arrowhead's, to see so slight a difference."

"He would be but a poor Indian, if he did'nt! No, no; it is war-time, and no red-skin is outlying without using his senses. Every skin has its own natur', and every natur' has its own laws, as well as its own skin. It was many years before I could master all these higher branches of a forest edication, for red-skin knowledge doesn't come as easy to white-skin natur', as what I suppose is intended to be whiteskin knowledge; though I have but little of the latter, having past most of my time in the wilderness."

"You have been a ready scholar, Master Pathfinder, as is seen by your understanding these things so well. I suppose it would be no great matter, for a man regularly brought up to the sea, to catch these trifles, if he could only bring his mind fairly to bear upon them."

"I don't know that. The white man has his difficulties