ghborhood, and he asked me to vary from the line
of march a little to look at the wonder. I had heard some marvels
consarning the spot from the soldiers of the 60th, which is my nat'ral
corps like, and not the 55th, with which I have sojourned so much of
late; but there are so many terrible liars in all rijiments that I
hardly believed half they had told me. Well, we went; and though we
expected to be led by our ears, and to hear some of that awful roaring
that we hear to-day, we were disappointed, for natur' was not then
speaking in thunder, as she is this morning. Thus it is in the forest,
Master Cap; there being moments when God seems to be walking abroad in
power, and then, again, there is a calm over all, as if His spirit lay
in quiet along the 'arth. Well, we came suddenly upon the stream, a
short distance above the fall, and a young Delaware, who was in our
company, found a bark canoe, and he would push into the current to reach
an island that lies in the very centre of the confusion and strife.
We told him of his folly, we did; and we reasoned with him on the
wickedness of tempting Providence by seeking danger that led to no ind;
but the youth among the Delawares are very much the same as the youth
among the soldiers, risky and vain. All we could say did not change his
mind, and the lad had his way. To me it seems, Mabel, that whenever
a thing is really grand and potent, it has a quiet majesty about it,
altogether unlike the frothy and flustering manner of smaller matters,
and so it was with them rapids. The canoe was no sooner fairly in them,
than down it went, as it might be, as one sails through the air on the
'arth, and no skill of the young Delaware could resist the stream. And
yet he struggled manfully for life, using the paddle to the last, like
the deer that is swimming to cast the hounds. At first he shot across
the current so swiftly, that we thought he would prevail; but he had
miscalculated his distance, and when the truth really struck him, he
turned the head upstream, and struggled in a way that was fearful to
look at. I could have pitied him even had he been a Mingo. For a few
moments his efforts were so frantic that he actually prevailed over
the power of the cataract; but natur' has its limits, and one faltering
stroke of the paddle set him back, and then he lost ground, foot by
foot, inch by inch, until he got near the spot where the river looked
even and green, and as if it were made of millions