with a view to
concealment. Many corps of American riflemen have been thus
attired, and the dress is one of the most striking of modern
times. The hunting-shirt is frequently white.

** The rifle of the army is short; that of the hunter is
always long.

"Even your traditions make the case in my favor, Chingachgook," he said,
speaking in the tongue which was known to all the natives who formerly
inhabited the country between the Hudson and the Potomac, and of
which we shall give a free translation for the benefit of the reader;
endeavoring, at the same time, to preserve some of the peculiarities,
both of the individual and of the language. "Your fathers came from the
setting sun, crossed the big river*, fought the people of the country,
and took the land; and mine came from the red sky of the morning, over
the salt lake, and did their work much after the fashion that had been
set them by yours; then let God judge the matter between us, and friends
spare their words!"

* The Mississippi. The scout alludes to a tradition which is
very popular among the tribes of the Atlantic states.
Evidence of their Asiatic origin is deduced from the
circumstances, though great uncertainty hangs over the whole
history of the Indians.

"My fathers fought with the naked red man!" returned the Indian,
sternly, in the same language. "Is there no difference, Hawkeye, between
the stone-headed arrow of the warrior, and the leaden bullet with which
you kill?"

"There is reason in an Indian, though nature has made him with a red
skin!" said the white man, shaking his head like one on whom such an
appeal to his justice was not thrown away. For a moment he appeared to
be conscious of having the worst of the argument, then, rallying again,
he answered the objection of his antagonist in the best manner his
limited information would allow:

"I am no scholar, and I care not who knows it; but, judging from what
I have seen, at deer chases and squirrel hunts, of the sparks below,
I should think a rifle in the hands of their grandfathers was not so
dangerous as a hickory bow and a good flint-head might be, if drawn with
Indian judgment, and sent by an Indian eye."

"You have the story told by your fathers," returned the other, coldly
waving his hand. "What say your old men? Do they tell the young warriors
that the pale faces met the red men, painted for war and armed with the
stone hatchet and woo