The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757 eBook
James Fenimore Cooper
When this necessary, and, happily, grateful duty had
been performed, each of the foresters stooped and
took a long and parting draught at that solitary and
silent spring*, around which and its sister fountains,
within fifty years, the wealth, beauty and talents
of a hemisphere were to assemble in throngs, in pursuit
of health and pleasure. Then Hawkeye announced
his determination to proceed. The sisters resumed
their saddles; Duncan and David grapsed their rifles,
and followed on footsteps; the scout leading the advance,
and the Mohicans bringing up the rear. The whole
party moved swiftly through the narrow path, toward
the north, leaving the healing waters to mingle unheeded
with the adjacent brooks and the bodies of the dead
to fester on the neighboring mount, without the rites
of sepulture; a fate but too common to the warriors
of the woods to excite either commiseration or comment.
* The scene of the foregoing
incidents is on the spot where
the village of Ballston
now stands; one of the two principal
watering places of America.
CHAPTER 13
“I’ll seek
a readier path.”
—Parnell
The route taken by Hawkeye lay across those sandy
plains, relived by occasional valleys and swells of
land, which had been traversed by their party on the
morning of the same day, with the baffled Magua for
their guide. The sun had now fallen low toward
the distant mountains; and as their journey lay through
the interminable forest, the heat was no longer oppressive.
Their progress, in consequence, was proportionate;
and long before the twilight gathered about them, they
had made good many toilsome miles on their return.
The hunter, like the savage whose place he filled,
seemed to select among the blind signs of their wild
route, with a species of instinct, seldom abating
his speed, and never pausing to deliberate. A
rapid and oblique glance at the moss on the trees,
with an occasional upward gaze toward the setting
sun, or a steady but passing look at the direction
of the numerous water courses, through which he waded,
were sufficient to determine his path, and remove
his greatest difficulties. In the meantime, the
forest began to change its hues, losing that lively
green which had embellished its arches, in the graver
light which is the usual precursor of the close of
day.
While the eyes of the sisters were endeavoring to
catch glimpses through the trees, of the flood of
golden glory which formed a glittering halo around
the sun, tinging here and there with ruby streaks,
or bordering with narrow edgings of shining yellow,
a mass of clouds that lay piled at no great distance
above the western hills, Hawkeye turned suddenly and
pointing upward toward the gorgeous heavens, he spoke:
