unks some forty or fifty feet beyond the line
of the perpendicular. In these cases we allude only to the giants of the
forest, pines of a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet in height, for
of the smaller growth, very many inclined so far as to steep their lower
branches in the water. In the position in which the Ark had now got, the
castle was concealed from view by the projection of a point, as indeed
was the northern extremity of the lake itself. A respectable mountain,
forest clad, and rounded, like all the rest, limited the view in that
direction, stretching immediately across the whole of the fair
scene, with the exception of a deep bay that passed the western end,
lengthening the basin, for more than a mile.

The manner in which the water flowed out of the lake, beneath the leafy
arches of the trees that lined the sides of the stream, has already been
mentioned, and it has also been said that the rock, which was a favorite
place of rendezvous throughout all that region, and where Deerslayer
now expected to meet his friend, stood near this outlet, and at no great
distance from the shore. It was a large, isolated stone that rested on
the bottom of the lake, apparently left there when the waters tore away
the earth from around it, in forcing for themselves a passage down the
river, and which had obtained its shape from the action of the elements,
during the slow progress of centuries. The height of this rock could
scarcely equal six feet, and, as has been said, its shape was not unlike
that which is usually given to beehives, or to a hay-cock. The latter,
indeed, gives the best idea not only of its form, but of its dimensions.
It stood, and still stands, for we are writing of real scenes, within
fifty feet of the bank, and in water that was only two feet in depth,
though there were seasons in which its rounded apex, if such a term can
properly be used, was covered by the lake. Many of the trees stretched
so far forward, as almost to blend the rock with the shore, when seen
from a little distance, and one tall pine in particular overhung it in a
way to form a noble and appropriate canopy to a seat that had held many
a forest chieftain, during the long succession of unknown ages, in
which America, and all it contained, had existed apart, in mysterious
solitude, a world by itself; equally without a familiar history, and
without an origin that the annals of man can reach.

When distant some two or three hundred feet from