My heart had its misgivings when I saw the lad choose the better horse, for it would be as easy to leave us with that beast, as it would for a nimble pigeon to part company from a flock of noisy and heavy winged crows.

But you see that truth is in the boy, and make a Red-skin once your friend, he is yours so long as you deal honestly by him." "What may be the distance to the sources of this stream ?" demanded Doctor Battius, whose eyes were rolling over the whirling eddies of the current, with a very portentous expression of doubt.

"At what distance may its secret springs be found ?" "That may be as the weather proves.

I warrant me your legs would be a-weary before you had followed its bed into the Rocky Mountains; but then there are seasons when it might be done without wetting a foot." "And in what particular divisions of the year do these periodical seasons occur ?" "He that passes this spot a few months from this time, will find that foaming water-course a desert of drifting sand." The naturalist pondered deeply.

Like most others, who are not endowed with a superfluity of physical fortitude, the worthy man had found the danger of passing the river, in so simple a manner, magnifying itself in his eyes so rapidly, as the moment of adventure approached, that he actually contemplated the desperate effort of going round the river, in order to escape the hazard of crossing it.