Cooper made the exit of that stream fifty feet wide, in the first place,
for no particular reason; in the second place, he narrowed it to less
than twenty to accommodate some Indians. He bends a "sapling" to the
form of an arch over this narrow passage, and conceals six Indians in its
foliage. They are "laying" for a settler's scow or ark which is coming
up the stream on its way to the lake; it is being hauled against the
stiff current by a rope whose stationary end is anchored in the lake; its
rate of progress cannot be more than a mile an hour. Cooper describes
the ark, but pretty obscurely. In the matter of dimensions "it was
little more than a modern canal-boat." Let us guess, then, that it was
about one hundred and forty feet long. It was of "greater breadth than
common." Let us guess, then, that it was about sixteen feet wide. This
leviathan had been prowling down bends which were but a third as long as
itself, and scraping between banks where it had only two feet of space
to spare on each side. We cannot too much admire this miracle.
A low-roofed log dwelling occupies "two-thirds of the ark's length"--a
dwelling ninety feet long and sixteen feet wide, let us say a kind of
vestibule train. The dwelling has two rooms--each forty-five feet long
and sixteen feet wide, let us guess. One of them is the bedroom of the
Hutter girls, Judith and Hetty; the other is the parlor in the daytime,
at night it is papa's bedchamber. The ark is arriving at the stream's
exit now, whose width has been reduced to less than twenty feet to
accommodate the Indians--say to eighteen. There is a foot to spare on
each side of the boat. Did the Indians notice that there was going to
be a tight squeeze there? Did they notice that they could make money by
climbing down out of that arched sapling and just stepping aboard when
the ark scraped by? No, other Indians would have noticed these things,
but Cooper's Indians never notice anything. Cooper thinks they are
marvelous creatures for noticing, but he was almost always in error
about his Indians. There was seldom a sane one among them.