.

CHAPTER V.

THE HOME OF THE HURON.

Tis nature's worship--felt--confessed,
Far as the life which warms the breast!
The sturdy savage midst his clan,
The rudest portraiture of man,
In trackless woods and boundless plains,
Where everlasting wildness reigns,
Owns the still throb--the secret start--
The hidden impulse of the heart.--BYRON.

The Huron, after his escape from the Shawnees, quickened his pace, as
we have stated, and went many a mile before he changed his long,
sidling trot into the less rapid walk. When he did this, it was upon
the shore of a large creek, which ran through one of the wildest and
most desolate regions of Ohio. In some portions the banks were nothing
more than a continuous swamp, the creek spreading out like a lake among
the reeds and undergrowth, through which glided the enormous
water-snake, frightened at the apparition of a man in this lonely spot.
The bright fish darted hither and thither, their sides flashing up in
the sunlight like burnished silver.

The agile Indian sprung lightly from one turf of earth to another, now
balancing himself on a rotten stump or root, now walking the length of
some fallen tree, so decayed and water-eaten that it mashed to a pulp
beneath his feet, and then leaping to some other precarious foothold,
progressing rapidly all the time and with such skill that he hardly
wetted his moccasin.

While treading a log thus, which gave back a hollow sound, the head of
an immense rattlesnake protruded from a hole in the tree, its tail
giving the deadly alarm, as it continued issuing forth, as if
determined to dispute the passage of man in this desolate place. The
fearless Huron scarcely halted. While picking his way through the
swamp he had carried his rifle lightly balanced in his left hand, and
he now simply changed it to his right, grasping it by the muzzle, so
that the stock was before him. He saw the cavernous mouth of the snake
opened to an amazing width; the thin tongue, that resembled a tiny
stream of blood; the small, glittering eyes; the horn-like fangs, at
the roots of which he well knew were the sacks filled almost to
bursting with the most deadly of all poisons; the thin neck, swelling
out until the scaly belly of the loathsome reptile was visible.

The Huron continued steadily approaching the revolting thing. He was
scarcely a yard distant when the neck of the snake arched like a
swan's, and the head was drawn far