In the morning I found, to my great disgust, that the camp was to retain its position for another day.  I dreaded its languor and monotony, and to escape it, I set out to explore the surrounding mountains.  I was accompanied by a faithful friend, my rifle, the only friend indeed on whose prompt assistance in time of trouble I could implicitly rely.  Most of the Indians in the village, it is true, professed good-will toward the whites, but the experience of others and my own observation had taught me the extreme folly of confidence, and the utter impossibility of foreseeing to what sudden acts the strange unbridled impulses of an Indian may urge him.  When among this people danger is never so near as when you are unprepared for it, never so remote as when you are armed and on the alert to meet it any moment.  Nothing offers so strong a temptation to their ferocious instincts as the appearance of timidity, weakness, or security.

Many deep and gloomy gorges, choked with trees and bushes, opened from the sides of the hills, which were shaggy with forests wherever the rocks permitted vegetation to spring.  A great number of Indians were stalking along the edges of the woods, and boys were whooping and laughing on the mountain-sides, practicing eye and hand, and indulging their destructive propensities by following birds and small animals and killing them with their little bows and arrows.  There was one glen, stretching up between steep cliffs far into the bosom of the mountain.  I began to ascend along its bottom, pushing my way onward among the rocks, trees, and bushes that obstructed it.  A slender thread of water trickled along its center, which since issuing from the heart of its native rock could scarcely have been warmed or gladdened by a ray of sunshine.  After advancing for some time, I conceived myself to be entirely alone; but coming to a part of the glen in a great measure free of trees and undergrowth, I saw at some distance the black head and red shoulders of an Indian among the bushes above.  The reader need not prepare himself for a startling adventure, for I have none to relate.  The head and shoulders belonged to Mene-Seela, my best friend in the village.  As I had approached noiselessly with my moccasined feet, the old man was quite unconscious of my presence; and turning to a point where I could gain an unobstructed view of him, I saw him seated alone, immovable as a statue, among the rocks and trees.  His face was turned upward, and his eyes seemed riveted on a pine tree springing from a cleft in the precipice above.  The crest of the pine was swaying to and fro in the wind, and its long limbs waved slowly up and down, as if the tree had life.  Looking for a while at the old man, I was satisfied that he was engaged in an act of worship or prayer, or communion of some kind with a supernatural being.  I longed to penetrate his thoughts, but I could do nothing more than conjecture and speculate.  I knew that though the intellect