noiselessly, that the
young officer was not aware of her absence until some minutes of
silence had satisfied him she must be gone. His first care then was to
survey, through the aperture that lay in a level with his eye, the
character of the scene before him. The small plain, in which lay the
encampment of the Indians, was a sort of oasis of the forest, girt
round with a rude belt of underwood, and somewhat elevated, so as to
present the appearance of a mound, constructed on the first principles
of art. This was thickly although irregularly studded with tents, some
of which were formed of large coarse mats thrown over poles disposed in
a conical shape, while others were more rudely composed of the leafy
branches of the forest.

Within these groups of human forms lay, wrapped in their blankets,
stretched at their lazy length. Others, with their feet placed close to
the dying embers of their fires, diverged like so many radii from their
centre, and lay motionless in sleep, as if life and consciousness were
wholly extinct. Here and there was to be seen a solitary warrior
securing, with admirable neatness, and with delicate ligatures formed
of the sinew of the deer, the guiding feather, or fashioning the bony
barb of his long arrow; while others, with the same warlike spirit in
view, employed themselves in cutting and greasing small patches of
smoked deerskin, which were to secure and give a more certain direction
to the murderous bullet. Among the warriors were interspersed many
women, some of whom might be seen supporting in their laps the heavy
heads of their unconscious helpmates, while they occupied themselves,
by the firelight, in parting the long black matted hair, and
maintaining a destructive warfare against the pigmy inhabitants of that
dark region. These signs of life and activity in the body of the camp
generally were, however, but few and occasional; but, at the spot where
Captain de Haldimar stood concealed, the scene was different. At a few
yards from the tree stood a sort of shed, composed of tall poles placed
upright in the earth, and supporting a roof formed simply of rude
boughs, the foliage of which had been withered by time. This simple
edifice might be about fifty feet in circumference. In the centre
blazed a large fire that had been newly fed, and around this were
assembled a band of swarthy warriors, some twenty or thirty in number,
who, by their proud, calm, and thoughtful bearing, might at once be