he panther of his tribe, the eldest son of the Lenape, the wisest
Sagamore of the Mohicans! Tell me, ye Delawares, has Tamenund been a
sleeper for a hundred winters?"

The calm and deep silence which succeeded these words, sufficiently
announced the awful reverence with which his people received the
communication of the patriarch. None dared to answer, though all
listened in breathless expectation of what might follow. Uncas, however,
looking in his face with the fondness and veneration of a favored child,
presumed on his own high and acknowledged rank, to reply.

"Four warriors of his race have lived, and died," he said, "since the
friend of Tamenund led his people in battle. The blood of the turtle has
been in many chiefs, but all have gone back into the earth from whence
they came except Chingachgook and his son."

"It is true--it is true," returned the sage; a flash of recollection
destroying all his pleasing fancies, and restoring him at once to a
consciousness of the true history of his nation. "Our wise men have
often said that two warriors of the unchanged race were in the hills of
the Yengeese; why have their seats at the council-fires of the Delawares
been so long empty?"

At these words the young man raised his head, which he had still kept
bowed a little, in reverence; and lifting his voice so as to be heard by
the multitude, as if to explain at once and forever the policy of his
family, he said aloud,--

"Once we slept where we could hear the salt lake speak in its anger.
Then we were rulers and sagamores over the land. But when a pale-face
was seen on every brook, we followed the deer back to the river of our
nation. The Delawares were gone. Few warriors of them all stayed to
drink of the stream they loved. Then said my fathers, 'Here will we
hunt. The waters of the river go into the salt lake. If we go towards
the setting sun, we shall find streams that run into the great lakes of
sweet water; there would a Mohican die, like fishes of the sea, in the
clear springs. When the Manitou is ready, and shall say "Come," we will
follow the river to the sea, and take our own again.' Such, Delawares,
is the belief of the children of the Turtle. Our eyes are on the rising,
and not towards the setting sun. We know whence he comes, but we know
not whither he goes. It is enough."

The men of the Lenape listened to his words with all the respect that
superstition could lend, finding a secret charm even in the figu