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 their 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
concerning these facts, as to oblige the Sergeant and Magnet, though the
first was my sister's husband, and I love the last like a child."

"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 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 differently--I 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 which 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."

"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 canvas, 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 is this: 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 th