The old gentleman laughed at this remark, and then said, “you may call me a temporary hermit, then; for you certainly found me alone, and sitting at the mouth of my cave. Indeed, if I were to assert my claim to it, I doubt whether there is any man living who could show a prior right; for I knew this place when few white men had ever penetrated what was then considered a remote wilderness.”
“The prospect must have changed very much since then,” said I.
“In some respects it certainly has,” he replied; “but the main features of a scene like this continue ever the same. The plough cannot level mountains, nor cultivation change the course of rivers. I have been tracing the windings of this stream with my eye, and find them just as they were; and I recognize every soaring peak, and every projecting rock as an old acquaintance; I saw broken clouds just like these floating above the mountain tops fifty years ago; and I would almost swear that yonder eagle is the same which then sailed so majestically through the air.”
“Those villages and forms, however, must be new to you.”
“Ah, yes!” said he, “there we see the hand of civilization. Where now our eyes take in no less than four neat and thriving villages, there were not then as many clusters of rude wigwams; and these green fields and blooming orchards were an unbroken wilderness.”
“A most happy change,” said I.
“So reason doubtless tells us,” he replied. “Better the peace and industry which now reign here, than the war-whoop, or the listless indolence of savage life. And yet it is melancholy to think how quickly these old lords of the forest have disappeared. Many a league was made in their rude fashion to endure between the parties and their descendants, as long as these mountains should continue to stand, or this river to run. The eternal hills still cast their shadows on the ever-rolling waters; but the powerful tribes who appealed to them as perpetual witnesses of their faith are extinct, or live only in a few wretched stragglers, thousands of miles away in the far west. We have possessed ourselves of their heritage; and to show our gratitude, we abuse them for not having made a better use of their own possessions, and congratulate ourselves on the happy change we have effected.”
“There will never be wanting romantic persons,” I remarked, “to celebrate the glories of savage life, and the felicity of spending a northern winter half naked and half starved, under the precarious shelter of a wigwam.”
“Well,” said he, with enthusiasm, “let them embalm the memory of the Red Man! It will appease the manes of those ambitious warriors to be renowned in song and story. The noblest spirits of the world have gained but a few lines in a Universal History, or a single page in a Biographical Dictionary, and have deemed themselves well paid for a life of toil. Ambition is everywhere the same; and its essence is a desire to be remembered. It may happen that the sad fate of the Indian will perpetuate his memory when the achievements of all his conquerors have been forgotten.”
“I cannot help suspecting,” said I, smiling, “that you have yourself been a warrior, perhaps the adopted son of the chief who presided over these hunting-grounds.”