"And now, my children, what shall be done to the Honontkoh? I have already removed the captive from their hands; for they are a people without faith. They live in darkness, and they wrap themselves in a shadow. They take their paths in deceit, and we see blood and dissension follow them. Already have they raised against us the wrath of our brethren of the Five Nations; they have brought the yellow cloud of shame upon the Oneidas. They have well nigh severed the threads which hold the roll of our league together. They have laid the hatchet to the root of the tree which we and our English father planted. I say, let them go forth from amongst us. The Totem of the Tortoise casts them forth. We will not have our lodges near their lodges. They shall not dwell within our palisade. Let them betake themselves to the darkness of the forest, and to the secret holes of the rock; for darkness and secrecy are the dwelling-places of their hearts. Or let them go, if they will, to the deceitful Hurons, to the people beyond Horicon, and fight beside the deceitful Frenchmen. With us they shall not dwell; let them be seen no more amongst us.--Is my judgment good?"
A general cry of approbation followed; the council broke up, and the warriors commenced wandering about, those who came from a distance seeking hospitality in the neighbouring lodges; for the great lodge itself could not afford room for all.
To her own little chamber, Otaitsa retired at once; and, barring the door, went down upon her knees, to offer up thanksgiving and prayer--thanksgiving, for hope is ever a blessing--prayer, for danger was still before her eyes. Safe for the next six months she knew Walter would be, in the careful custody of her father; but she still prayed earnestly that her mother's God would find some way of deliverance, for the sake of Him who died to save mankind.
[CHAPTER XXXII.]
More than five months had passed, months of great trouble and anxiety to many. The usual tragedies of life had been enacted in many a house, and in many a home: the dark, ever-recurring scene of death and suffering and grief had passed through the dwellings of rich and poor. Many a farce, too, in public and private, had been exhibited to the gaze; for, in the history of each man and of all the world, the ridiculous and the grand, the sad and the cheerful, stand side by side in strange proximity.
The woods, blazing in their autumnal crimson when last we saw them, had worn and soiled, in about a fortnight, the glorious vestments of the autumn, and cast them to the earth; and now they had put on the green garments of the summer, and robed themselves in the tender hues of youth. The rivers and the streams, bound in icy chains for many a month, now dashed wildly and impetuously along in the joy of lately-recovered freedom, and, swollen by the spring rains, in some places became torrents; in some places, slowly flooded the flat land, marching over the meadows like a vast invading army.
The beasts of the forest were busy in their coverts, the birds in the brake, or on the tree-top; the light clouds skimmed along the soft blue sky; and the wind tossed the light young branches to and fro in its sport. Everything was gay and active on the earth, and over the earth; everything spoke of renewed life, and energy, and hope.
To the fancy of those who have not seen it, the vast primæval forest presents an idea of monotony; and certainly, when seen from a distance, it produces that impression on the mind. Looming dark and sombre, thick and apparently impenetrable, over upland and dell, over plain and mountain, it conveys a sensation of solemnity by its very sameness; and, though the first sight is sublime, its long-continued presence is oppressive. But penetrate into its depths, and you will find infinite variety; now the dense, tangled thicket, through which the panther and the wild cat creep with difficulty, and into which the deer cannot venture; now the quaking morass, unsafe to the foot, yet bearing up the tamarach or cedar, with its rank grasses, its strangely-shaped leaves, and its rich and infinitely varied flowers; now the wide grove, extending for miles and miles, with the tall bolls of the trees rising up distinct and separate, and with little or no brushwood hiding the carpet of dry pine-spindles and cones on which they stand; then the broad savanna, with its grass knee-high, green and fresh and beautiful, and merely a tree here and there to shelter some spot from the sun, and cast a soft blue shadow on the natural meadow; and then again, in many spots, a space of ground where every characteristic of the forest is mingled--here thick and tangled brush, there a patch of open green, here the swamp running along the brook-side, there the sturdy oak or wide-spreading chestnut, standing far apart in reverence for each other's giant limbs, shading many a pleasant slope, or topping the lofty crag.
It was under one of these large trees, on a high bank commanding the whole prospect round for many and many a mile, and in the eastern part of the province of New York, that three red men were seated in the early summer of 1758. A little distance in advance of them, and somewhat lower down the hill, was a small patch of brush, composed of fantastic-looking bushes, and one small blasted tree. It formed, as it were, a sort of screen to the Indians' resting-place from all eyes below, yet did not in the least impede their sight as it wandered over the wide forest world around them. From the elevation on which they were placed, the eye of the red man, which seems, from constant practice, to have gained the keenness of the eagle's sight, could plunge into every part of the woods around where the trees were not actually contiguous. The trail, wherever it quitted the shelter of the branches; the savanna, wherever it broke the outline of the forest; the river, where it wound along in its course to the ocean; the military road from the banks of the Hudson to the head of Lake Horicon; the smallest pond, the little stream, were all spread out to view as if upon a map.
Over the wide, extensive prospect the eyes of those three Indians wandered incessantly, not as if employed in searching for some definite object, the direction of which, if not the precise position, they knew, but rather as if they were looking for anything which might afford them some object of pursuit or interest. They sat there nearly two hours in the same position; and during the whole of that time not more than four or five words passed between them.