throughout the dense primeval wildernesses; the line of Cherokee towns
along the banks represented almost the only human habitations for many
hundred miles, but to Tus-ka-sah the country seemed to groan under a
surplus of population, for there yet dwelt right merrily at Ioco Town
the youthful Amoyah, the gayest of all gay birds, and a painful sense of
the superfluous pressed upon the brain at the very sight of him.

This trait of frivolity was to Tus-ka-sah the more revolting, since he
himself was of a serious cast of mind and possessed of faculties, rare
in an Indian, which are called "fine business capacity." He was esteemed
at an English trading-house down on the Eupharsee River as the best
"second man" in any of the towns; this phrase "second man" expressing
the united functions of alderman, chief of police, chairman of boards of
public improvements, and the various executive committees of
civilization. His were municipal duties,--the apportionment of community
labor, the supervision of the building of houses and the planting of
crops, the distribution of public bounty, the transaction of any
business of Ioco Town with visitors whom individual interest might bring
thither. So well did he acquit himself when these errands involved
questions of commercial policy that the English traders were wont to
declare that Tus-ka-sah, the Terrapin, had "horse sense"--which
certainly was remarkable in a terrapin!

His clear-headed qualities, however, valued commercially, seemed hardly
calculated to adorn the fireside. In sensible cumbrous silence and
disastrous eclipse he could only contemplate with dismayed aversion the
palpable effect of Amoyah's gay sallies of wit, his fantastic lies, his
vainglorious boastings, and his wonderful stories, which seemed always
to enchant his audience, the household of the damsel to whom in
civilized parlance they were both paying their addresses. These