"They told us many stories at Albany of the wild animals we should
fall in with, and yet we have seen nothing to frighten a seal. I
doubt if any of your inland animals will compare with a low latitude
shark."

"See!" exclaimed the niece, who was more occupied with the sublimity
and beauty of the "boundless wood" than with her uncle's arguments;
"yonder is a smoke curling over the tops of the trees -- can it
come from a house?"

"Ay, ay; there is a look of humanity in that smoke," returned the
old seaman, "which is worth a thousand trees. I must show it to
Arrowhead, who may be running past a port without knowing it. It
is probable there is a caboose where there is a smoke."

As he concluded, the uncle drew a hand from his bosom, touched the
male Indian, who was standing near him, lightly on the shoulder,
and pointed out a thin line of vapor which was stealing slowly out
of the wilderness of leaves, at a distance of about a mile, and
was diffusing itself in almost imperceptible threads of humidity
in the quivering atmosphere. The Tuscarora was one of those
noble-looking warriors oftener met with among the aborigines of this
continent a century since than to-day; and, while he had mingled
sufficiently with the colonists to be familiar with their habits
and even with their language, he had lost little, if any, of the
wild grandeur and simple dignity of a chief. Between him and the
old seaman the intercourse had been friendly, but distant; for the
Indian had been too much accustomed to mingle with the officers of
the different military posts he had frequented not to understand
that his present companion was only a subordinate. So imposing,