her has his promise, and she dares not hope; yet the chief loves her,
and when the feasting is over he follows her footprints to the shore,
where he sees her canoe turning the point of an island. He silently
pursues and comes upon her as she sits waving and moaning. He tries to
embrace her, but she draws apart. He asks her to sing to him; she bids
him begone.
He takes a more imperious tone and orders her to listen to her chief. She
moves away. He darts toward her. Turning on him a face of sorrow, she
runs to the edge of a steep rock and waves him back. He hastens after.
Then she springs and disappears in the deep water. The Sun plunges after
her and swims with mad strength here and there. He calls. There is no
answer. Slowly he returns to the village and tells the people what has
happened. The Bird's parents are stricken and the Sun moans in his sleep.
At noon a hunter comes in with strange tidings: flowers are growing on
the water! The people go to their canoes and row to the Island of Elms.
There, in a cove, the still water is enamelled with flowers, some as
white as snow, filling the air with perfume, others strong and yellow,
like the lake at sunset.
"Explain to us," they cry, turning to the old Medicine of his tribe, "for
this was not so yesterday."
"It is our daughter," he answered. "These flowers are the form she
takes. The white is her purity, the yellow her love. You shall see that
her heart will close when the sun sets, and will reopen at his coming."
And the young chief went apart and bowed his head.
ROGERS'S SLIDE
The shores of Lakes George and Champlain were ravaged by war. Up and down
those lovely waters swept the barges of French and English, and the green
hills rang to the shrill of bugles, the boom of cannon, and the yell of
savages. Fiction and history have been weft across the woods and the
memory of deeds still echoes among the heights. It was at Glen's Falls,
in the cave on the rock in the middle of the river, that the brave Uncas
held the watch with Hawkeye. Bloody Defile and Bloody Pond, between there
and Lake George, take their names from the "Bloody morning scout" sent
out by Sir William Johnson on a September day in 1755 to check Dieskau
until Fort William Henry could be completed. In the action that ensued,
Colonel Williams, founder of Williams College, and Captain Grant, of the
Connecticut line, great-grandfather of the President who bore that name,
were killed. The victims, d
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