to a regular, double-sighted, long-barrelled rifle. Such conceits
will come over men from long habit; and prejudice is, perhaps, the
commonest failing of human natur'."

While the desultory conversation just related had been carried on
in subdued voices, the canoes were dropping slowly down with the
current within the deep shadows of the western shore, the paddles
being used merely to preserve the desired direction and proper
positions. The strength of the stream varied materially, the water
being seemingly still in places, while in other reaches it flowed
at a rate exceeding two or even three miles in the hour. On the
rifts it even dashed forward with a velocity that was appalling to
the unpractised eye. Jasper was of opinion that they might drift
down with the current to the mouth of the river in two hours from
the time they left the shore, and he and the Pathfinder had agreed
on the expediency of suffering the canoes to float of themselves
for a time, or at least until they had passed the first dangers
of their new movement. The dialogue had been carried on in voices,
too, guardedly low; for though the quiet of deep solitude reigned
in that vast and nearly boundless forest, nature was speaking
with her thousand tongues in the eloquent language of night in a
wilderness. The air sighed through ten thousand trees, the water
rippled, and at places even roared along the shores; and now and
then was heard the creaking of a branch or a trunk, as it rubbed
against some object similar to itself, under the vibrations of a
nicely balanced body. All living sounds had ceased. Once, it is
true, the Pathfinder fancied he heard the howl of a distant wolf,
of which a few prowled through these woods; but it was a transient
and doubtful cry, that might possibly have been attributed to the
imagination. When he desired his companions, however, to cease