silence, then cracking his whip, he resumed his song with some careless
chat, and drove home. A few days later the first pages of the new book
were written. When the touch of Time was frosting his own head, he leads
Natty, as a youth, over the first warpath of his hero. And so the
"Glimmerglass" and its "Mt. Vision" country grew into the story of "The
Deerslayer"; it is "the very soul of the little lake overflowing with
youthful freshness and vivid with stirring adventure."

[Illustration: THE GLIMMERGLASS.]

On the bosom of its waters is anchored "Muskrat Castle," and over it, to
and fro, move the "Ark of Floating Tom" and the Indian canoes, which
gave a strange, wild interest to the story. Afloat and ashore come those
unlike sisters,--proud Judith, handsome but designing, and
simple-hearted Hetty, gentle, innocent, and artless; both so real and
feminine, and yet so far removed from their supposed father, the
buccaneer. Then comes this Uncas of the eagle air, swooping with lithe
movement to his rocky trysting-place. And Uncas is in strong contrast
with "The Pathfinder's" "Arrowhead," who was a wonder-sketch of the
red-man's treachery and vengeance, while his sweet girl-wife,
"Dew-of-June," shows, true to life, an Indian woman's unfaltering
devotion to her savage lord. Over all its pages broods the commanding
spirit of "The Deerslayer,"--the forest's young Bayard who has yet to
learn what the taking of human life is like. So, in "The Deerslayer,"
printed in 1841, the "Little Lake" (Otsego), with its picturesque
shores, capes, and forest-crowned heights, was made classic soil. Just
back of "The Five-Mile Point."--where Deerslayer gave himself up to
merciless Indian justice at the Huron Camp, and later was rescued by
British regulars--is the rocky gorge, Mohican Glen, through which a
purling brook ripples by its stone-rift banks thatched with great clumps
of rose and fern. From the gravel-strewn shore of Hutter's Point beyond,
the eyes of Leatherstocking first fell upon the Glimmerglass, and
impressed by its wonder and beauty he exclaimed: "This is grand! 't is
solemn! 't is an edication of itself." Leaning on his rifle and gazing
in every direction, he added: "Not a tree disturbed, but everything left
to the ordering of the Lord, to live and die, to His designs and laws!
This is a sight to warm the heart."

[Illustration: OTSEGO LAKE.]

The tribes, hunters, and trappers had their "own way of calling
things," and "se