s intercourse and barter was carried on, were of
the tribe of the Onandagas. They inhabited a valley as fair as the sun
ever shone upon. From a point in the interior--distant more than a
sun's journey to the south, this capacious valley opens and widens as
it advances northwardly--presenting, in its general outline, an
immense space, with three sides, the base of which, for the distance
of half a sun's travel, is washed by the waters of the beautiful
Ontario. As it recedes from the lake, its surface rises gradually to
the point or tip, whence, did the strength of vision and the shape of
the earth permit, the eye might command a complete survey of the
valley, and of the inland ocean that spreads before it. On either
side, it is bounded by steep and high hills that verge towards each
other as they stretch to the south, and whose elevation increases,
until they are lost among a range of lofty mountains, at the
termination of the valley.

At this precise point, there gushes forth, from beneath a huge and
precipitous rock, a large spring of pure and clear water, cool and
refreshing as the dark forest through which it glides, and which,
after a sinuous course along the centre of the dell, receiving as it
flows the contributions of numerous lesser springs and streams,
communicates its waters to the foaming current of the Oswego. Whether
this singular but beautiful region now presents the form in which it
was first fashioned by the Master of Life, or has since received the
shape and appearance it bears from the disruption of some mighty mass
of waters, from frightful earthquakes, or some other great convulsion
of nature--neither I nor my red brothers can say. Yet does it appear
plain that no convulsive heavings of an earthquake could have left its
outline or its surface so smooth or regular. No bursting of waters
from the top of a mountain (a mountain too, having no capacious bosom
for its reception) could have borne away such an immense body of earth
as must have been scooped out from between the high and wide-spreading
hills.

But, if this region was singular in its formation, it was not less so
in the character and manners of the tribe by which it was peopled.
They claimed direct descent from the Great Spirit--the Creator of the
world. Regarding themselves as his offspring, they deemed themselves
the especial objects of his fatherly care. Deeply possessed with a
sense of this superhuman relation, it will not be matter of s