as the most of a man who acts nearest the right, Hurry.
But this is a glorious spot, and my eyes never a-weary looking at it!"

"Tis your first acquaintance with a lake; and these ideas come over us
all at such times. Lakes have a gentle character, as I say, being pretty
much water and land, and points and bays."

As this definition by no means met the feelings that were uppermost in
the mind of the young hunter, he made no immediate answer, but stood
gazing at the dark hills and the glassy water in silent enjoyment.

"Have the Governor's or the King's people given this lake a name?" he
suddenly asked, as if struck with a new idea. "If they've not begun to
blaze their trees, and set up their compasses, and line off their maps,
it's likely they've not bethought them to disturb natur' with a name."

"They've not got to that, yet; and the last time I went in with skins,
one of the King's surveyors was questioning me consarning all the region
hereabouts. He had heard that there was a lake in this quarter, and
had got some general notions about it, such as that there was water and
hills; but how much of either, he know'd no more than you know of the
Mohawk tongue. I didn't open the trap any wider than was necessary,
giving him but poor encouragement in the way of farms and clearings. In
short, I left on his mind some such opinion of this country, as a man
gets of a spring of dirty water, with a path to it that is so muddy that
one mires afore he sets out. He told me they hadn't got the spot down
yet on their maps, though I conclude that is a mistake, for he showed me
his parchment, and there is a lake down on it, where there is no lake
in fact, and which is about fifty miles from the place where it ought to
be, if they meant it for this. I don't think my account will encourage
him to mark down another, by way of improvement."

Here Hurry laughed heartily, such tricks being particularly grateful to
a set of men who dreaded the approaches of civilization as a curtailment
of their own lawless empire. The egregious errors that existed in the
maps of the day, all of which were made in Europe, were, moreover, a
standing topic of ridicule among them; for, if they had not science
enough to make any better themselves, they had sufficient local
information to detect the gross blunders contained in those that
existed. Any one who will take the trouble to compare these unanswerable
evidences of the topographical skill of our fathers