water, with a path to it that is so muddy that one mires afore he
sets out. He told me they hadn't got the spot down yet on their
maps, though I conclude that is a mistake, for he showed me his
parchment, and there is a lake down on it, where there is no lake
in fact, and which is about fifty miles from the place where it
ought to be, if they meant it for this. I don't think my account
will encourage him to mark down another, by way of improvement."

Here Hurry laughed heartily, such tricks being particularly grateful
to a set of men who dreaded the approaches of civilization as a
curtailment of their own lawless empire. The egregious errors that
existed in the maps of the day, all of which were made in Europe,
were, moreover, a standing topic of ridicule among them; for, if
they had not science enough to make any better themselves, they had
sufficient local information to detect the gross blunders contained
in those that existed. Any one who will take the trouble to compare
these unanswerable evidences of the topographical skill of our
fathers a century since, with the more accurate sketches of our
own time, will at once perceive that the men of the woods had a
sufficient justification for all their criticism on this branch of
the skill of the colonial governments, which did not at all hesitate
to place a river or a lake a degree or two out of the way, even
though they lay within a day's march of the inhabited parts of the
country.

"I'm glad it has no name," resumed Deerslayer, "or at least, no
pale-face name; for their christenings always foretell waste and
destruction. No doubt, howsoever, the red-skins have their modes
of knowing it, and the hunters and trappers, too; they are likely
to call the place by something reasonable and resembling."