With this brief intimation she departed, and so noiselessly,
that the young officer was not aware of her absence until
some minutes of silence had satisfied him she must be
gone. His first care then was to survey, through the
aperture that lay in a level with his eye, the character
of the scene before him. The small plain, in which lay
the encampment of the Indians, was a sort of oasis of
the forest, girt round with a rude belt of underwood,
and somewhat elevated, so as to present the appearance
of a mound, constructed on the first principles of art.
This was thickly although irregularly studded with tents,
some of which were formed of large coarse mats thrown
over poles disposed in a conical shape, while others were
more rudely composed of the leafy branches of the forest.

Within these groups of human forms lay, wrapped in their
blankets, stretched at their lazy length. Others, with
their feet placed close to the dying embers of their
fires, diverged like so many radii from their centre,
and lay motionless in sleep, as if life and consciousness
were wholly extinct. Here and there was to be seen a
solitary warrior securing, with admirable neatness, and
with delicate ligatures formed of the sinew of the deer,
the guiding feather, or fashioning the bony barb of his
long arrow; while others, with the same warlike spirit
in view, employed themselves in cutting and greasing
small patches of smoked deerskin, which were to secure
and give a more certain direction to the murderous bullet.
Among the warriors were interspersed many women, some of
whom might be seen supporting in their laps the heavy