1. WHILE Deerslayer was speaking, he put a foot against the end of the light boat; and, giving a vigorous shove, he sent it out into the lake a hundred feet or more, where, taking the true current, it would necessarily float past the point and be in no further danger of coming ashore.

2. The savage started at this ready and decided expedient, and his companion saw that he cast a hurried and fierce glance at his own canoe, or that which contained the paddles. The change of manner, however, was but momentary; and then the Iroquois resumed his air of friendliness, and a smile of satisfaction. "Good!" he repeated, with stronger emphasis than ever. "Young head, old mind. Know how to settle quarrel. Farewell, brother. He go to house in water,-muskrat house. Indian go to camp; tell chiefs no find canoe."

3. Deerslayer was not sorry to hear this proposal, for he felt anxious to join the females, and he took the offered hand of the Indian very willingly. The parting words were friendly; and, while the red man walked calmly toward the wood, with the rifle in the hollow of his arm, without once looking back in uneasiness or distrust, the white man moved toward the remaining canoe, carrying his piece in the same pacific manner, it is true, but keeping his eyes fastened on the movements of the other.

4. This distrust, however, seemed to be altogether uncalled for; and, as if ashamed to have entertained it, the young man averted his look and stepped carelessly up to his boat. Here he began to push the canoe from the shore, and to make his other preparations for departing. He might have been thus employed a minute, when, happening to turn his face toward the land, his quick and certain eye told him at a glance the imminent jeopardy in which his

life was placed. The black, ferocious eyes of the savage were glancing on him, like those of the crouching tiger, through a small opening in the bushes, and the muzzle of his rifle seemed already to be opening in a line with his own body.

5. Then indeed the long practice of Deerslayer as a hunter did him good service. Accustomed to fire with the deer on the bound, and often when the precise position of the animal's body had in a manner to be guessed at, he used the same expedients here. To cock and poise his rifle were the acts of a single moment and a single, motion; then, aiming almost without sighting, he fired into the bushes where he knew a body ought to be, in order to sustain the appalling countenance which alone was visible.

6. There was not time to raise the piece any higher or to take a more deliberate aim. So rapid were his movements that both parties discharged their pieces at the same instant, the concussions mingling in one report. The mountains, indeed, gave back but a single echo. Deerslayer dropped his piece, and stood, with head erect, steady as one of the pines in the calm of a June morning, watching the result; while the savage gave the yell that has become historical for its appalling influence, leaped through the bushes, and came bounding across the open ground, flourishing a tomahawk.

7. Still, Deerslayer moved not, but stood with his unloaded rifle fallen against his shoulders, while, with a hunter's habits, his hands were mechanically feeling in the powder-horn and charger. When about forty feet from his enemy, the savage hurled his keen weapon; but it was with an eye so vacant, and a hand so unsteady and feeble, that the young man caught it by the handle as it

was flying past him. At that instant the Indian staggered, and fell his whole length on the ground.

DEFINITIONS.-2. Ex pē'di ent, contrivance; resort. 3. Pa çif’ie, peaceful. 4. Im'mi nent, near at hand. Jeop'ard y, danger. 6. Con eus'sions, shocks. 7. Me chăn'ie al ly, without conscious exertion of will.

NOTE.—2. Ir'o quois, or Six Nations, is the name given by the French to the Indian confederacy of Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas, and Tuscaroras, the whole being recognized as a distinct branch of the American race.

62.-APOSTROPHE TO THE OCEAN.

GEORGE GORDON NOEL, LORD BYRON, was born in London, January 22, 1788. During his early life his mother had not the means to give him a good education, but on the death of his grand-uncle, William, Lord Byron, in 1799, he succeeded to the family estate. He went at once to a private school, and afterward to Harrow. In 1807 he published a collection of poems entitled Hours of Idleness. He afterward published several other poetical works, a number of dramas, many criticisms and essays, and some novels. Amongst his best-known works are Manfred, The Giaour, The Corsair, Lara, The Bride of Abydos, Don Juan, and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. He first gained fame as the portrayer of the gloomy and wrathful passions, but he afterward showed that he could depict the humorous with equal ability. His poetry is marked by sublimity of sentiment and beauty of expression. He died April 19, 1824. The following extract is from the last canto of Childe Harold.

1. THERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,

By the deep Sea, and music in its roar.
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

2. Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;

3.

Man marks the earth with ruin; his control
Stops with the shore: upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage save his own,

When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

His steps are not upon thy paths; thy fields
Are not a spoil for him: thou dost arise

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And sendest him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling, to his gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,

And dashest him again to earth. There let him lay.

4. The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee and arbiter of war,-

5.

These are thy toys, and as the snowy flake They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee :
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage,-what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay

Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou;

Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play, Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow: Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

6. Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

7.

Calm or convulsed, in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark-heaving; boundless, endless, and sublime,
The image of Eternity, the throne

Of the Invisible,-even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy

Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward; from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers: they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror, 'twas a pleasing fear,

For I was, as it were, a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane—as I do here.

DEFINITIONS.-A pos'tro phe, a turning away from the real auditory and addressing an absent or imaginary one. 2. Un inělled', without the tolling of the funeral-bell. 3. Hăp ́ly, perhaps. 4. Är'ma ments, armed forces. 6. Glass'es, reflects as in a mirror. 7. Wan'toned, sported.

NOTES.-4. Ar ma'da, the Spanish fleet fitted out in 1588 by Philip II. of Spain, for the conquest of England.

Traf al gär', a headland of Spain, on the south-west coast of Cadiz. In the great naval battle off Cape Trafalgar, October 21, 1805, the English, under Lord Nelson (who was killed in the action), gained a complete victory over the combined French and Spanish fleets.