would not be likely to be overlooked by such plunderers, for, though
I've not been in the way of quarreling with them tribes myself,
the Delawares give me such an account of 'em that I've pretty much
set 'em down in my own mind, as thorough miscreants."

"You may do that with a safe conscience, or for that matter, any
other savage you may happen to meet."

Here Deerslayer protested, and as they went paddling down the lake,
a hot discussion was maintained concerning the respective merits
of the pale-faces and the red-skins. Hurry had all the prejudices
and antipathies of a white hunter, who generally regards the Indian
as a sort of natural competitor, and not unfrequently as a natural
enemy. As a matter of course, he was loud, clamorous, dogmatical and
not very argumentative. Deerslayer, on the other hand, manifested
a very different temper, proving by the moderation of his language,
the fairness of his views, and the simplicity of his distinctions,
that he possessed every disposition to hear reason, a strong, innate
desire to do justice, and an ingenuousness that was singularly
indisposed to have recourse to sophism to maintain an argument; or
to defend a prejudice. Still he was not altogether free from the
influence of the latter feeling. This tyrant of the human mind,
which ruses on it prey through a thousand avenues, almost as soon
as men begin to think and feel, and which seldom relinquishes its
iron sway until they cease to do either, had made some impression
on even the just propensities of this individual, who probably
offered in these particulars, a fair specimen of what absence from
bad example, the want of temptation to go wrong, and native good
feeling can render youth.