“You have, then, seen these renowned falls, Pathfinder?” the girl eagerly inquired.

“I have —­ yes, I have; and an awful sight I witnessed at that same time.  The Sarpent and I were out scouting about the garrison there, when he told me that the traditions of his people gave an account of a mighty cataract in this neighborhood, and he asked me to vary from the line of march a little to look at the wonder.  I had heard some marvels consarning the spot from the soldiers of the 60th, which is my nat’ral corps like, and not the 55th, with which I have sojourned so much of late; but there are so many terrible liars in all rijiments that I hardly believed half they had told me.  Well, we went; and though we expected to be led by our ears, and to hear some of that awful roaring that we hear to-day, we were disappointed, for natur’ was not then speaking in thunder, as she is this morning.  Thus it is in the forest, Master Cap; there being moments when God seems to be walking abroad in power, and then, again, there is a calm over all, as if His spirit lay in quiet along the ’arth.  Well, we came suddenly upon the stream, a short distance above the fall, and a young Delaware, who was in our company, found a bark canoe, and he would push into the current to reach an island that lies in the very centre of the confusion and strife.  We told him of his folly, we did; and we reasoned with him on the wickedness of tempting Providence by seeking danger that led to no ind; but the youth among the Delawares are very much the same as the youth among the soldiers, risky and vain.  All we could say did not change his mind, and the lad had his way.  To me it seems, Mabel, that whenever a thing is really grand and potent, it has a quiet majesty about it, altogether unlike the frothy and flustering manner of smaller matters, and so it was with them rapids.  The canoe was no sooner fairly in them, than down it went, as it might be, as one sails through the air on the ’arth, and no skill of the young Delaware could resist the stream.  And yet he struggled manfully for life, using the paddle to the last, like the deer that is swimming to cast the hounds.  At first he shot across the current so swiftly, that we thought he would prevail; but he had miscalculated his distance, and when the truth really struck him, he turned the head upstream, and struggled in a way that was fearful to look at.  I could have pitied him even had he been a Mingo.  For a few moments his efforts were so frantic that he actually prevailed over the power of the cataract; but natur’ has its limits, and one faltering stroke of the paddle set him back, and then he lost ground, foot by foot, inch by inch, until he got near the spot where the river looked even and green, and as if it were made of millions of threads of water, all bent over some huge rock, when he shot backwards like an arrow and disappeared, the bow of the canoe tipping just enough to let us see what had become of him.  I met a Mohawk some years later who had witnessed the whole affair from the bed of the stream below, and he told me that the Delaware continued to paddle in the air until he was lost in the mists of the falls.”