ble in form, and
worthy to be loved by red and white."

Such was Pomperaug. But his nation was passing away, and but fifty of
his own tribe now dwelt in the valley in which his fathers, numberless
as the leaves upon the oaks under which they dwelt, had hunted for
many ages. The day of their dominion was past. There was a spell over
the dark warrior. The Great Spirit had sealed his doom. He had sent
strange men to his shores--and a change had come over the face of the
land. The thickly settled town--the lofty spire of the house where men
assembled to worship the Great Being--the fields, green, and glowing
with the deep verdure of spring--the slopes of the hills, made smooth
with cultivation--had taken the place of the lofty forest, from which
arose the cry of the red warrior, as he rushed on his foes, or the
plash of his oar, as he swept his light canoe on his expeditions of
war or love. The stranger had built his house upon the margin of his
favourite streams, whence a portion of his daily food was procured;
and he, whose soil it was, had fled from the profanation of his
father's bones. One by one, like leaves in the Harvest-Moon, had they
dropped from the vision of those around them. To-day, you saw a son of
the forest with an eye like the eagle's, and a foot like the
antelope's; to-morrow, he was gone, and gone without a token. The
waters that lave the thirsty sands of the seashore sink not more
silently in their ebb than the Indians have disappeared from the
vicinity of the abodes of white men. And in this same silent way
floated down the stream of oblivion the Indians of the valley of
Pomperaug. Perceiving that their doom was sealed, they patiently
submitted to a fate which they could not avert.

It was, therefore, without resistance that they received into the
heart of their little territory a company of the people of my nation.
They were in number about thirty. Their governor, who was also their
priest, was a man of great age, though possessed of all the mental and
bodily vigour of youth. His years were more than three score and ten,
and his hair as white as snow, yet his feet were sprightly as those of
a young deer. His tall and broad form was still erect; his eye had
lost none of its fire, nor his temper any of its energy; he was old in
years, but young in the vigour of his soul.

This aged priest had brought to the valley of Pomperaug the remnant of
a family of many souls. It was a maiden--the daughter of hi