I Don't Choose
To Be Made A Butt Of, And I'll Show You That I Can Be As Savage As
Other
people." This threat had the effect of producing a total silence for the
remainder of the journey; but Mr.
Latham took an opportunity of explaining
to me that in this speech he intended no personal allusion, but had found
it necessary to check the ill-timed mirth in the stage. In spite of his
presumption and pedantry, he never lost an opportunity of showing
kindness. I saw him last in the very extremity of terror, during a violent
gale off the coast of Maine.
For the first fifty miles after leaving the Bend, our road lay through
country as solitary and wild as could be conceived - high hills, covered
with endless forests of small growth. I looked in vain for the gigantic
trees so celebrated by travellers in America. If they ever grew in this
region, they now, in the shape of ships, are to be found on every sea
where England's flag waves. Occasionally the smoke of an Indian wigwam
would rise in a thin blue cloud from among the dark foliage of the
hemlock; and by the primitive habitation one of the aboriginal possessors
of the soil might be seen, in tattered habiliments, cleaning a gun or
repairing a bark canoe, scarcely deigning an apathetic glance at those
whom the appliances of civilisation and science had placed so immeasurably
above him. Then a squaw, with a papoose strapped upon her back, would peep
at us from behind a tree; or a half-clothed urchin would pursue us for
coppers, contrasting strangely with the majesty of Uncas, or the
sublimity of Chingachgook; portraits which it is very doubtful if Cooper
ever took from life.
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