if as much can be said in favor of your lakes up hereaway."

"That towns and settlements lead to sin, I will allow; but our lakes
are bordered by the forests, and one is every day called upon to
worship God in such a temple. That men are not always the same,
even in the wilderness, I must admit for the difference between
a Mingo and a Delaware is as plain to be seen as the difference
between the sun and the moon. I am glad, friend Cap, that we have
met, however, if it be only that you may tell the Big Sarpent here
that there are lakes in which the water is salt. We have been
pretty much of one mind since our acquaintance began, and if the
Mohican has only half the faith in me that I have in him, he believes
all that I have told him touching the white men's ways and natur's
laws; but it has always seemed to me that none of the red-skins
have given as free a belief as an honest man likes to the accounts
of the Big Salt Lakes, and to that of their being rivers that flow
up stream."

"This comes of getting things wrong end foremost," answered Cap,
with a condescending nod. "You have thought of your lakes and rifts
as the ship; and of the ocean and the tides as the boat. Neither
Arrowhead nor the Serpent need doubt what you have said concerning
both, though I confess myself to some difficulty in swallowing the
tale about there being inland seas at all, and still more that
there is any sea of fresh water. I have come this long journey as
much to satisfy my own eyes concerning these facts, as to oblige
the Sergeant and Magnet, though the first was my sister's husband,
and I love the last like a child."

"You are wrong, friend Cap, very wrong, to distrust the power of