feeble and broken sounds were, however, too familiar to the foresters to draw their attention from the more interesting matter of their dialogue. While one of these loiterers showed the red skin and wild accoutrements of a native of the woods, the other exhibited, through the mask of his rude and nearly savage equipments, the brighter though sun-burnt and long-faded complexion of one who might claim descent from a European parentage. The former was seated on the end of a mossy log, in a posture that permitted him to heighten the effect of his earnest language by the calm but expressive gestures of an Indian engaged in debate. His body, which was nearly naked, presented a terrific emblem of death, drawn in intermingled colours of white and black.1 His closely shaved head, on which no other hair than the well-known and chivalrous scalping tuft2 was preserved, was without ornament of any kind, with the exception of a solitary eagle’s plume, that crossed his crown, and depended over the left shoulder. A tomahawk and scalping-knife, of English manufacture were in his girdle; while a short military rifle, of that sort with which the policy of the whites armed their savage allies, lay carelessly across his bare and sinewy knee. The expanded chest, full formed limbs, and grave countenance of this warrior, would denote that he had reached the vigour of his days, though no symptoms of decay appeared to have yet weakened his manhood.
The frame of the white man, judging by such parts as were not concealed by his clothes, was like that of one who had known hardships and exertion from his earliest youth. His person, though muscular, was rather attenuated than full; but every nerve and muscle appeared strung and indurated by unremitted exposure and toil. He wore a hunting-shirt of forest green, fringed with faded yellow,1 and a summer cap of skins which had been shorn of their fur. He also bore a knife in a girdle of wampum, like that which confined the scanty garments of the Indian, but no tomahawk. His moccasins were ornamented after the gay fashion of the natives, while the only part of his under-dress which appeared below the hunting-frock was a pair of buckskin leggings that laced at the sides, and which were gartered above the knees with the sinews of a deer. A pouch and horn completed his personal accoutrements, though a rifle of great length,2 which the theory of the more ingenious whites had taught them was the most dangerous of all firearms, leaned against a neighbouring sapling. The eye of the hunter, or scout, whichever he might be, was small, quick, keen and restless, roving while he spoke on every side of him, as if in quest of game, or distrusting the sudden approach of some lurking enemy. Notwithstanding the symptoms of habitual suspicion, his countenance was not only without guile, but at the moment at which he is introduced, it was charged with an expression of sturdy honesty.
‘Even your traditions make the case in my favour, Chingachgook,’ he said, speaking in the tongue which was known to all the natives who formerly inhabited the country between the Hudson and the Potomac, and of which we shall give a free translation for the benefit of the reader; endeavouring, at the same time, to preserve some of the peculiarities, both of the individual and of the language. ‘Your fathers came from the setting sun, crossed the big river,3 fought the people of the country, and took the land; and mine came from the red sky of the morning, over the salt lake, and did their work much after the fashion that had been set them by yours; then let God judge the matter between us, and friends spare their words!’
‘My fathers fought with the naked red man!’ returned the Indian sternly, in the same language. ‘Is there no difference, Hawkeye, between the stone-headed arrow of the warrior, and the leaden bullet with which you kill?’
‘There is reason in an Indian, though nature has made him with a red skin!’ said the white man, shaking his head like one on whom such an appeal to his justice was not thrown away. For a moment he appeared to be conscious of having the worst of the argument, then, rallying again, he answered the objection of his antagonist in the best manner his limited information would allow.
‘I am no scholar, and I care not who knows it; but judging from what I have seen, at deer chases and squirrel hunts, of the sparks below, I should think a rifle in the hands of their grandfathers was not so dangerous as a hickory-bow and a good flint-head might be, if drawn with Indian judgment, and sent by an Indian eye.’1
‘You have the story told by your fathers,’ returned the other, coldly, waving his hand. ‘What say your old men? Do they tell the young warriors that the pale-faces met the red men, painted for war and armed with the stone hatchet and wooden gun?’
‘I am not a prejudiced man, nor one who vaunts himself on his natural privileges, though the worst enemy I have on earth, and he is an Iroquois, daren’t deny that I am genuine white,’ the scout replied, surveying with secret satisfaction the faded colour of his bony and sinewy hand; ‘and I am willing to own that my people have many ways, of which, as an honest man, I can’t approve. It is one of their customs to write in books what they have done and seen, instead of telling them in their villages, where the lie can be given to the face of a cowardly boaster, and the brave soldier can call on his comrades to witness for the truth of his words. In consequence of this bad fashion, a man who is too conscientious to mis-spend his days among the women, in learning the names of black marks, may never hear of the deeds of his fathers, nor feel a pride in striving to outdo them. For myself, I conclude the Bumppos could shoot, for I have a natural turn with a rifle, which must have been handed down from generation to generation, as, our holy commandments tell us, all good and evil gifts are bestowed; though I should be loth to answer for other people in such a matter. But every story has its two sides; so I ask you, Chingachgook, what passed, according to the traditions of the red men, when our fathers first met?’
A silence of a minute succeeded, during which the Indian sat mute; then, full of the dignity of his office, he commenced his brief tale, with a solemnity that served to heighten its appearance of truth.
‘Listen, Hawkeye, and your ear shall drink no lie. ’Tis what my fathers have said, and what the Mohicans have done.’ He hesitated a single instant, and bending a cautious glance towards his companion, he continued, in a manner that was divided between interrogation and assertion, ‘Does not this stream at our feet run towards the summer, until its waters grow salt, and the current flows upward?’
‘It can’t be denied that your traditions tell you true in both these matters,’ said the white man; ‘for I have been there, and have seen them; though why water, which is so sweet in the shade, should become bitter in the sun, is an alteration for which I have never been able to account.’
‘And the current?’ demanded the Indian, who expected his reply with that sort of interest that a man feels in the confirmation of testimony at which he marvels even while he respects it; ‘the fathers of Chingachgook have not lied?’
‘The holy Bible is not more true, and that is the truest thing in nature. They call this up-stream current the tide, which is a thing soon explained, and clear enough. Six hours the waters run in, and six hours they run out, and the reason is this: when there is higher water in the sea than in the river, they run in, until the river gets to be highest, and then it runs out again.’
‘The waters on the woods, and on the great lakes, run downward until they lie like my hand,’ said the Indian, stretching the limb horizontally before him, ‘and then they run no more.’
‘No honest man will deny it,’ said the scout, a little nettled at the implied distrust of his explanation of the mystery of the tides; ‘and I grant that it is true on the small scale, and where the land is level. But everything depends on what scale you look at things. Now, on the small scale, the earth is level; but on the large scale it is round. In this manner, pools and ponds,
