confused with other matters?" Moreover, there are few now remaining who of
their own memory could controvert or correct me. And if they essay to do
so, why should not my word be at least as weighty as theirs? And so to
the story:

* * * * *

I was in my eighth year, and there was snow on the ground.

The day is recorded in history as November 13, A.D. 1757, but I am afraid
that I did not know much about years then, and certainly the month seems
now to have been one of midwinter. The Mohawk, a larger stream then by far
than in these days, was not yet frozen over, but its frothy flood ran very
dark and chill between the white banks, and the muskrats and the beavers
were all snug in their winter holes. Although no big fragments of ice
floated on the current, there had already been a prodigious scattering of
the bateaux and canoes which through all the open season made a thriving
thoroughfare of the river. This meant that the trading was over, and that
the trappers and hunters, white and red, were either getting ready to go
or had gone northward into the wilderness, where might be had during the
winter the skins of dangerous animals--bears, wolves, catamounts, and
lynx--and where moose and deer could be chased and yarded over the crust,
not to refer to smaller furred beasts to be taken in traps.

I was not at all saddened by the departure of these rude, foul men, of
whom those of Caucasian race were not always the least savage, for they
did not fail to lay hands upon traps or nets left by the heedless within
their reach, and even were not beyond making off with our boats, cursing
and beating children who came unprotected in their path, and putting the
women in terror of their very lives. The cold weather was welcome not only