through the gleam of sunshine, and quickly hides itself among the
underbrush, in its quest for the neighboring cove; and impeded there by
the massy corpse of a giant of the forest, which had lived out its
incalculable term of life, and been overthrown by mere old age, and lies
buried in the new vegetation that is born of its decay. What footsteps
can have worn this half-seen path? Hark! Do we not hear them now
rustling softly over the leaves? We discern an Indian woman,--a majestic
and queenly woman, or else her spectral image does not represent her
truly,--for this is the great Squaw Sachem, whose rule, with that of her
sons, extends from Mystic to Agawam. That red chief, who stalks by her
side, is Wappacowet, her second husband, the priest and magician, whose
incantations shall hereafter affright the pale-faced settlers with grisly
phantoms, dancing and shrieking in the woods, at midnight. But greater
would be the affright of the Indian necromancer, if, mirrored in the pool
of water at his feet, he could catch a prophetic glimpse of the noonday
marvels which the white man is destined to achieve; if he could see, as
in a dream, the stone front of the stately hall, which will cast its
shadow over this very spot; if he could be aware that the future edifice
will contain a noble Museum, where, among countless curiosities of earth
and sea, a few Indian arrow-heads shall be treasured up as memorials of a
vanished race!

No such forebodings disturb the Squaw Sachem and Wappacowet. They pass
on, beneath the tangled shade, holding high talk on matters of state and
religion, and imagine, doubtless, that their own system of affairs will
endure forever. Meanwhile, how full of its own proper life is the scene
that lies around them! The gray squirrel runs up the trees, and rustles
among the upper branches. Was not that the leap of a deer? And there is
the whirr of a partridge! Methinks, too, I catch the cruel and stealthy
eye of a wolf, as he draws back into yonder impervious density of