ished
no reason why the beautiful maiden, so lovely and so inoffensive,
should be banned. She had not injured, then why should she be spurned?
But his argument availed not to influence the warriors, or to bend
their stern hearts to pity. They drove the fair Menana from the arms
of him she loved best, and, exerting the authority, so potent among
the red men of the wilderness, of a father, and of chiefs, and of
elders, they carried away the lover from the village of the Ottawas,
thus dividing those whom the Great Being had so clearly created for
each other.

But my brother asks what became of the beautiful maiden. Let him
listen, and I will tell him. She pined away with grief at being
separated from the man she loved. She sang not the sweet song which
young maidens sing, who know neither love nor care--but her song was
lonely and sad, as that of the bird of night. She wandered by herself
in the dark and gloomy woods, as the bird flits when deprived of its
mate, or the deer which carries its death-wound from the shaft of the
hunter. Each day her eye lost a portion of its light, and her step of
its buoyancy. She laughed no more, nor joined the dance of maidens,
nor went with them to gather wild flowers; but her amusements, if
amusements they could be called, were to weep and sigh, to wander
alone with listless step, and to sit by the edge of the cataract,
telling her sad story to the spirits of the flood. The Great Spirit,
seeing her grief, and knowing that a heart that is broken hath no more
business among the things of this world, bade her rejoin her friends
in the surge of the cataract. She heard the well-known and
well-remembered voice, and prepared to obey. Calling around her the
friends whom her sweetness and good-humour had won her, she bade them
a tearful adieu, and received the like tribute of kindness. The young
Braves, who had before attempted to win her love, crowded around her
to catch her last farewell, anxious yet fearing to attempt to change a
resolution which had been dictated by the Great Spirit. They had tough
spears in their hands, and well filled quivers at their shoulders, and
their cheeks and brows were stained with the hue of wrath, for they
were prepared to avenge on the haughty Andirondacks the slight and
injury done the beauteous Menana. The maidens came to witness her
departure, with tears bedewing their cheeks. All accompanied her to
the brink of the cataract, and beheld her throw herself into