d to them as she was by the memory of the wise and
brave warrior, her father, and by her own gentle disposition. When
they spoke of her, they likened her, in their language, to whatever
was most beautiful, harmless, and timid, among the animals--the fawn
of the wood, the yellow bird of the glades, a spring wind sweeping
over a field of grass, a dove that had found its long absent mate.

[Footnote A: The passage of the Highlands on the Hudson.]

The beautiful maiden, of whom I am telling my brother, had beheld in
her childhood, when her foot was little, and her heart trembling, the
Cascade of Melsingah, and the form of the Manitou had once been
revealed to her, as the evening was setting in, standing in his
wolf-skin robes before the waterfall. After that she saw him often in
her dreams, and, when she came to that age at which the children of
the forest choose their protecting spirit, she chose for her's the
Spirit of the Cascade of Melsingah. It was not long before a
circumstance took place which strengthened her reverence and that of
her people for the good Spirit, and proved the interest he took in the
welfare of his beautiful charge.

One day she went alone to his abode, to pay him her customary
offerings in behalf of herself, the friends she loved, and her
nation; she carried in her hand a broad belt of wampum, and a white
honeycomb from the hollow oak; and on her way she stopped and plaited
a garland of the gayest flowers of the season. On arriving at the
spot, she went down into the narrow little glen, through which the
brook flowed before it poured itself over the rock, and, standing near
the edge, she dropped her gifts, one by one, into the current which
instantly carried them to the waterfall. The pool, into which the
water descends, was deeper than it is now; the continual crumbling and
falling of the rocks from above, for many an age, having partially
filled up the deep blue basin. The stream, too, at that time, had been
lately swelled by profuse rains, and rushed down the precipice with a
heavier torrent, and a louder noise, than she had ever known it to do
before. In approaching more nearly to the edge, and looking down to
see what had become of her offerings, she incautiously set her foot on
a stone covered with the slimy deposit of the brook; it slipped, and
she was precipitated headlong with the torrent into the pool below.

What followed she did not recollect--darkness, as deep as that of the
grave,