continent, or search, without our
reward, for the path by which he has made the downward journey to his
present condition of second childhood."

"And what see you in all this?" demanded the trapper, who, though a
little confused by the terms of his companion, seized the thread of his
ideas.

"A demonstration of my problem, that nature did not make so vast a
region to lie an uninhabited waste so many ages. This is merely the
moral view of the subject; as to the more exact and geological--"

"Your morals are exact enough for me," returned the old man, "for I
think I see in them the very pride of folly. I am but little gifted in
the fables of what you call the Old World, seeing that my time has been
mainly passed looking natur' steadily in the face, and in reasoning on
what I've seen, rather than on what I've heard in traditions. But I have
never shut my ears to the words of the good book, and many is the long
winter evening that I have passed in the wigwams of the Delawares,
listening to the good Moravians, as they dealt forth the history and
doctrines of the elder times, to the people of the Lenape! It was
pleasant to hearken to such wisdom after a weary hunt! Right pleasant
did I find it, and often have I talked the matter over with the Great
Serpent of the Delawares, in the more peaceful hours of our out-lyings,
whether it might be on the trail of a war-party of the Mingoes, or on
the watch for a York deer. I remember to have heard it, then and there,
said, that the Blessed Land was once fertile as the bottoms of the
Mississippi, and groaning with its stores of grain and fruits; but
that the judgment has since fallen upon it, and that it is now more
remarkable for its barrenness than any qualities to boast of."

"It is true; but Egypt--nay much of Africa furnishes still more striking
proofs of this exhaustion of nature."

"Tell me," interrupted the old man, "is it a certain truth that
buildings are still standing in that land of Pharaoh, which may be
likened, in their stature, to the hills of the 'arth?"

"It is as true as that nature never refuses to bestow her incisores on
the animals, mammalia; genus, homo--"

"It is very marvellous! and it proves how great He must be, when His
miserable creatur's can accomplish such wonders! Many men must have been
needed to finish such an edifice; ay, and men gifted with strength and
skill too! Does the land abound with such a race to this hour?"

"Far from it. Most of t