caught with a certain playful clasp such as years ago--more than half a
century--Odalie was wont to give it, when she had been waiting for him
long, and would wait no longer. And looking up, he could see her
standing there, waiting still, smiling serenely, joyously as of yore;
and so she would stand till the dream vanished in the reality of the
children clustering around his knees, besieging him once more for the
story of Old Fort Loudon.

NOTES

1 Page 8. In addition to luring an enemy within shot by the mimicry of
the voice of bird or beast the Indians' consummate art of ambuscade
enabled them to imitate the footprints of game by affixing the hoofs of
deer or buffalo or the paws of bear to their own feet and hands, and
thus duplicate the winding progress of these animals for miles with such
skill as to deceive not merely the white settlers, new to the country,
but Indian enemies of other tribes, expert woodmen like themselves.

2 Page 18. The name of this famous town is variously given. Adair spells
it as Choate. Bancroft inclines to Chotee. Bartram has it as
Chote-Great. Some of the old maps show it as Chotte. Modern historians
of Tennessee, Hayward, J. G. M. Ramsey, Putnam, and others make it
Chota, but most of the earlier writers concerning this region adopt the
French rendering and call it Chote; Hewatt, however, David Ramsey, and
others use the _accent grave_, Chote. This town, seldom alluded to
without the phrase "old town" or "beloved town," to distinguish it from
another Indian village of the same name among the Lower Towns, was a
veritable "city of refuge," and the only one of the Cherokee nation. A
murderer, even if a white man and the victim a Cherokee, might live for
years here secure from vengeance. Although there is an instance known of
a malefactor, who sought an asylum here and was prevented from landing,
being held down in the Tennessee River until drowned, still the rule was
inviolable that if the refugee could but gain a footing on the
ever-sacred soil, he was as safe as if clinging to the horns of an
altar. This fact contributed, with other confirmatory circumstances of
usage and tradition, to continue the speculations touching the identity
of the American Indians with the lost tribes of Israel. Humboldt says
that from the most remote times of the Missions the opinion has been
entertained that the languages of the American Indians and the Hebrew
display extraordinary analogies. He ascribe