had struck him when he arrived at the port at the mouth of the Hudson
with the hunter and the Onondaga. The French capital in Canada was all
of the state; it was its creature. If the state declined, it declined,
there was little strength at the roots, little that sprang from the
soil, but in New York, which men already forecast as the metropolis of
the New World, there was strength everywhere. It might be a sprawling
town. There might be no courtliness to equal the courtliness at the
heart of Quebec, but there was vigor, vigor everywhere. The people were
eager, restless, curious, always they worked and looked ahead.

He saw all these things very clearly. Silence, loneliness and distance
gave a magnificent perspective. Facts that were obscured when he was
near at hand, now stood out sharp and true. His thoughts in this period
were often those of a man double his age. His iron health too remained.
His was most emphatically the sound mind in the sound body, each helping
the other, each stimulating the other to greater growth.

It was a fact, however, that the Onondaga belief, peopling the air and
all sorts of inanimate objects with spirits, grew upon him; perhaps it
is better to say that it was a feeling rather than a belief. According
to Tayoga the good spirits fought with the bad, and on his island the
good had prevailed. They had told him that a ship was coming, and then
they had warned him that it would be a ship of pirates. They had shown
him how to drive away the ruffians. His inspiration had not been his
own, it had come from them and he thankfully acknowledged it.

He told himself now as he went about his island that he heard the good
spirits singing among the leaves and he told it to himself so often that
he ended by believing it. It was such a pleasant and consoling belief
too. He listened to hear them say that he would leave the island when