g to the heart of the maidens of the world. After
surveying the stern array of warriors for a moment, with a curious and
enquiring look, she walked up to the youthful Piskaret, and said to
him in a sweet and soft tone, "Thou art very beautiful. Tell me if I
may not win thy love?"

The Brave, who was smitten with the charms of the fair creature,
pressing to her side, whispered that he loved her better than all the
world, and wished her to become the wife of his bosom. Then he
painted, to her willing ear, the charms of his native land, and spoke
of the tall old oaks which threw their giant shade over the banks of
the gentle and placid river, and the many thick glades filled with
lusty deer, and lakes stocked with delicious wild fowl, which were to
be found within the hunting-grounds of his nation. He told her of the
plenty that reigned in the cabins of the Andirondacks, and how much
better their women fared than those of the surrounding tribes. The
Daughter of the Flood smiled sweetly on the youth, and tears, the
first she had ever shed--and sighs, the first she had ever
breathed--proofs of her having acquired a human soul--stole to her
heart and her eyes.

And now she had received a soul, and become possessed of those
faculties which confer pleasure and pain, and create for their
possessor happiness and misery, and joy and sorrow. She was now alive
to the hopes and fears which exalt or depress existence--had tears for
those that wept, and a laugh for those that laughed. She, who entered
that assembly of warriors, fearless as an eagle seated on the top of a
lofty pine, now at once, in the twinkling of an eye, became filled
with trembling, and alarm, and apprehension, and strove to hide her
blushes by half hiding her face in the bosom of him she loved.

But pride, which has often interrupted the course of love, as well as
led to the downfall of nations, crept into the councils of the
Andirondacks, and they refused to permit the young warrior to take to
wife the maiden who was not of mortal parentage. They said that she
was of the blood of the spirits of the cataract, of a race who had
delighted to shed a cold and pestilential vapour over the villages of
their nation, and had destroyed several Andirondacks, whose blood
remained unrevenged. In vain did the youth plead his love; in vain did
he show, that if the spirits of the flood warred on their neighbours,
who were unable to inflict a wound on their adversaries, it furn