{118}
“But the scene
Is lovely round; a beautiful river there
Wanders amid the fresh and fertile meads,
The paradise he made unto himself,
Mining the soil for ages. On each side
The fields swell upward to the hills; beyond,
Above the hills, in the blue distance, rise
The mighty columns with which earth props heaven.
There is a tale about these gray old rocks,
A sad tradition.”
Bryant.
It is not our purpose to describe, step by step, the progress of the
Indian fugitives. Their sagacity in traversing their native forests,
their skill in following and eluding an enemy, and all their politic
devices, have been so well described in a recent popular work, that
their usages have become familiar as household words, and nothing
remains but to shelter defects of skill and knowledge under the veil
of silence, since we hold it to be an immutable maxim, that a thing
had better not be done than be ill done.
Suffice it to say, then, that the savages, after crossing the track of
their pursuers, threaded the forest with as little apparent
uncertainty as to their path as is now felt by travellers who pass
through the same still romantic country in a stagecoach and on a broad
turnpike. As they receded from the Connecticut the pine levels
disappeared, the country was broken into hills, and rose into high
mountains.
{119}
They traversed the precipitous sides of a river that, swollen by the
vernal rains, wound its way among the hills, foaming and raging like
an angry monarch. The river, as they traced its course, dwindled to a
mountain rill, but still retaining its impetuous character, leaping
and tumbling for miles through a descending defile, between high
mountains, whose stillness, grandeur, and immobility contrasted with
the noisy, reckless little stream as stern manhood with infancy. In
one place, which the Indians called the throat of the mountain, they
were obliged to betake themselves to the channel of the brook, there
not being room on its margin for a footpath. The branches of the trees
that grew from the rocky and precipitous declivities on each side met
and interlaced, forming a sylvan canopy over the imprisoned stream. To
Magawisca, whose imagination breathed a living spirit into all the
objects of Nature, it seemed as if the spirits of the wood had stooped
to listen to its sweet music.
After tracing this little sociable rill to its source, they again
plunged into the silent forest, waded through marshy ravines, and
mounted to the summits of steril hills, till at length, at the close
of the third day, after having gradually descended for several miles,
the hills on one side receded, and left a little interval of meadow,
through which they wound into the lower valley of the Housatonic.
This continued and difficult march had been sustained by Everell with
a spirit and fortitude that evidently won the favour of the savages,
who always {120} render homage to superiority over physical evil.
There was something more than this common feeling in the joy with
which Mononotto noted the boy’s silent endurance, and even contempt of
pain. One noble victim seemed to him better than a “human hecatomb.”
In proportion to his exultation in possessing an object worthy to
avenge his son, was his fear that his victim would escape from him.
During the march, Everell had twice, aided by Magawisca, nearly
achieved his liberty. These detected conspiracies, though defeated,
rendered the chief impatient to execute his vengeance, and he secretly
resolved that it should not be delayed longer than the morrow.
As the fugitives emerged from the narrow defile, a new scene opened
upon them; a scene of valley and hill, river and meadow, surrounded by
mountains, whose encircling embrace expressed protection and love to
the gentle spirits of the valley. A light summer shower had just
fallen, and the clouds, “in thousand liveries dight,” had risen from
the western horizon, and hung their rich draperies about the clear
sun. The horizontal rays passed over the valley, and flushed the upper
branches of the trees, the summits of the hills, and the mountains
with a flood of light, while the low grounds, reposing in deep shadow,
presented one of those striking and accidental contrasts in nature
that a painter would have selected to give effect to his art.
The gentle Housatonic wound through the depths of the valley, in some
parts contracted to a narrow {121} channel, and murmuring over the
rocks that rippled its surface, and in others spreading wide its clear
mirror, and lingering like a lover amid the vines, trees, and flowers
that fringed its banks. Thus it flows now; but not, as then, in the
sylvan freedom of Nature, when no clattering mills and bustling
factories threw their prosaic shadows over the silver waters; when not
even a bridge spanned their bosom; when not a trace of man’s art was
seen, save the little bark canoe that glided over them, or lay idly
moored along the shore. The savage was rather the vassal than the
master of nature, obeying her laws, but never usurping her dominion.
He only used the land she prepared, and cast in his corn but where she
seemed to invite him by mellowing and upheaving the rich mould. He did
not presume to hew down her trees, the proud crest of her uplands, and
convert them into “russet lawns and fallows gray.” The axeman’s
stroke, that music to the _settler’s_ ear, never then violated the
peace of Nature, or made discord in her music.
Imagination may be indulged in lingering for a moment in those dusky
regions of the past, but it is not permitted to reasonable, instructed
man to admire or regret tribes of human beings who lived and died,
leaving scarcely a more enduring memorial than the forsaken nest that
vanishes before one winter’s storms.
But to return to our wanderers. They had entered the expanded vale by
following the windings of the Housatonic around a hill, conical and
easy of ascent, excepting on that side which overlooked the river,
{122} where, half way from the base to the summit, rose a
perpendicular rock, bearing on its beetling front the age of
centuries. On every other side the hill was garlanded with laurels,
now in full and profuse bloom, here and there surmounted by an
intervening pine, spruce, or hemlock, whose seared winter foliage was
fringed with the bright, tender sprouts of spring. We believe there is
a chord even in the heart of savage man that responds to the voice of
Nature. Certain it is, the party paused, as it appeared, from a common
instinct, at a little grassy nook, formed by the curve of the hill, to
gaze on this singularly beautiful spot. Everell looked on the smoke
that curled from the huts of the village, imbosomed in pine-trees on
the adjacent plain. The scene to him breathed peace and happiness, and
gushing thoughts of home filled his eyes with tears. Oneco plucked
clusters of laurels, and decked his little favourite, and the old
chief fixed his melancholy eye on a solitary pine, scathed and blasted
by tempests, that, rooted in the ground where he stood, lifted its
topmost branches to the bare rock, where they seemed, in their wild
desolation, to brave the elemental fury that had stripped them of
beauty and life.
The leafless tree was truly, as it appeared to the eye of Mononotto, a
fit emblem of the chieftain of a ruined tribe. “See you, child,” he
said, addressing Magawisca, “those unearthed roots? the tree must
fall: hear you the death-song that wails through those blasted
branches?”
“Nay, father, listen not to the sad strain; it is {123} but the spirit
of the tree mourning over its decay; rather turn thine ear to the glad
song of this bright stream, image of the good. She nourishes the aged
trees, and cherishes the tender flowerets, and her song is ever of
happiness till she reaches the great sea, image of our eternity.”
“Speak not to me of happiness, Magawisca; it has vanished with the
smoke of our homes. I tell ye, the spirits of our race are gathered
about this blasted tree. Samoset points to that rock--that
sacrifice-rock.” His keen glance turned from the rock to Everell.
Magawisca understood its portentous meaning, and she clasped her hands
in mute and agonizing supplication. He answered to the silent
entreaty. “It is in vain; my purpose is fixed, and here it shall be
accomplished. Why hast thou linked thy heart, foolish girl, to this
English boy? I have sworn, kneeling on the ashes of our hut, that I
would never spare a son of our enemy’s race. The lights of heaven
witnessed my vow, and think you that, now this boy is given into my
hands to avenge thy brother, I will spare him? no, not to _thy_
prayer, Magawisca. No; though thou lookest on me with thy mother’s
eye, and speakest with her voice, I will not break my vow.”
Mononotto had indeed taken a final and fatal resolution; and prompted,
as he fancied, by supernatural intimations, and perhaps dreading the
relentings of his own heart, he determined on its immediate execution.
He announced his decision to the {124} Mohawks. A brief and animated
consultation followed, during which they brandished their tomahawks,
and cast wild and threatening glances at Everell, who at once
comprehended the meaning of these menacing looks and gestures. He
turned an appealing glance to Magawisca. She did not speak. “Am I to
die now?” he asked; she turned, shuddering, from him.
Everell had expected death from his savage captors, but while it was
comparatively distant he thought he was indifferent to it, or, rather,
he believed he should welcome it as a release from the horrible
recollection of the massacre at Bethel, which haunted him day and
night. But, now that his fate seemed inevitable, nature was appalled,
and shrunk from it, and the impassive spirit for a moment endured a
pang that there cannot be in any “corp’ral sufferance.” The avenues of
sense were closed, and past and future were present to the mind, as if
it were already invested with the attributes of its eternity. From
this agonizing excitement Everell was roused by a command from the
savages to move onward. “It is then deferred,” thought Magawisca; and
heaving a deep sigh, as if for a moment relieved from a pressure on
her overburdened heart, she looked to her father for an explanation;
he said nothing, but proceeded in silence towards the village.
The lower valley of the Housatonic, at the period to which our history
refers, was inhabited by a peaceful, and, as far as that epithet could
ever be applied to our savages, an agricultural tribe, whose
territory, {125} situate midway between the Hudson and the
Connecticut, was bounded and defended on each side by mountains then
deemed impracticable to a foe. These inland people had heard from the
hunters of distant tribes, who occasionally visited them, of the
aggressions and hostility of the English strangers; but, regarding it
as no concern of theirs, they listened much as we listen to news of
the Burmese war--Captain Symmes’ theory--or lectures on phrenology.
One of their hunters, it is true, had penetrated to Springfield, and
another had passed over the hills to the Dutch fort at Albany, and
returned with the report that the strangers’ skin was the colour of
cowardice; that they served their women, and spoke an unintelligible
language. There was little in this account to interest those who were
so ignorant as to be scarcely susceptible of curiosity, and they
hardly thought of the dangerous strangers at all, or only thought of
them as a people from whom they had nothing to hope or fear, when the
appearance of the ruined Pequod chief with his English captives roused
them from their apathy.
The village was on a level, sandy plain, extending for about half a
mile, and raised by a natural and almost perpendicular bank fifty feet
above the level of the meadows. At one extremity of the plain was the
hill we have described; the other was terminated by a broad green,
appropriated to sports and councils.
The huts of the savages were irregularly scattered over the plain:
some on cleared ground, and others {126} just peeping out of copses of
pine trees; some on the very verge of the plain, overlooking the
meadows, and others under the shelter of a high hill that formed the
northern boundary of the valley, and seemed stationed there to defend
the inhabitants from their natural enemies, cold and wind.
The huts were the simplest structures of human art; but, as in no
natural condition of society a perfect equality obtains, some were
more spacious and commodious than others. All were made with flexible
poles, firmly set in the ground, and drawn and attached together at
the top. Those of the more indolent or least skilful were filled in
with branches of trees and hung over with coarse mats, while those of
the better order were neatly covered with bark, prepared with art and
considerable labour for the purpose. Little garden patches adjoined a
few of the dwellings, and were planted with beans, pumpkins, and
squashes; the seeds of these vegetables, according to an Indian
tradition (in which we may perceive the usual admixture of fable and
truth), having been sent to them in the bill of a bird from the
southwest by the Great Spirit.
The Pequod chief and his retinue passed just at twilight over the
plain, by one of the many footpaths that indented it. Many of the
women were still at work with their stone-pointed hoes in their
gardens. Some of the men and children were at their sports on the
green. Here a straggler was coming from the river with a string of
fine trout; another fortunate sportsman appeared from the hillside
{127} with wild turkeys and partridges; while two emerged from the
forest with still more noble game, a fat antlered buck.
This village, as we have described it, and perhaps from the affection
its natural beauty inspired, remained the residence of the savages
long after they had vanished from the surrounding country. Within the
memory of the present generation the remnant of the tribe migrated to
the West; and even now some of their families make a summer pilgrimage
to this their Jerusalem, and are regarded with a melancholy interest
by the present occupants of the soil.
Mononotto directed his steps to the wigwam of the Housatonic chief,
which stood on one side of the green. The chief advanced from his hut
to receive him, and by the most animated gestures expressed to
Mononotto his pleasure in the success of his incursion, from which it
seemed that Mononotto had communicated with him on his way to the
Connecticut.
A brief and secret consultation succeeded, which appeared to consist
of propositions from the Pequod, and assent on the part of the
Housatonic chief, and was immediately followed by a motion to separate
the travellers. Mononotto and Everell were to remain with the chief,
and the rest of the party to be conducted to the hut of his sister.
Magawisca’s prophetic spirit too truly interpreted this arrangement;
and thinking or hoping there might be some saving power in her
presence, since her father tacitly acknowledged it by the pains he
{128} took to remove her, she refused to leave him. He insisted
vehemently; but, finding her unyielding, he commanded the Mohawks to
force her away.
Resistance was vain, but resistance she would still have made but for
the interposition of Everell. “Go with them, Magawisca,” he said, “and
leave me to my fate. We shall meet again.”
“Never!” she shrieked; “your fate is death.”
“And after death we shall meet again,” replied Everell, with a
calmness that evinced his mind was already in a great degree resigned
to the event that now appeared inevitable. “Do not fear for me,
Magawisca. Better thoughts have put down my fears. When it is over,
think of me.”
“And what am I to do with this scorching fire till then?” she asked,
pressing both her hands on her head. “Oh, my father, has your heart
become stone?”
Her father turned from her appeal, and motioned to Everell to enter
the hut. Everell obeyed; and when the mat dropped over the entrance
and separated him from the generous creature whose heart had kept true
time with his through all his griefs, who he knew would have redeemed
his life with her own, he yielded to a burst of natural and not
unmanly tears.
If this could be deemed a weakness, it was his last. Alone with his
God, he realized the sufficiency of His presence and favour. He
appealed to that mercy which is never refused, nor given in stinted
measure to the humble suppliant. Every expression of pious {129}
confidence and resignation which he had heard with the heedless ear of
childhood, now flashed like an illumination upon his mind.
His mother’s counsels and instructions, to which he had often lent a
wearied attention; the passages from the Sacred Book he had been
compelled to commit to memory when his truant thoughts were ranging
forest and field, now returned upon him as if a celestial spirit
breathed them into his soul. Stillness and peace stole over him. He
was amazed at his own tranquillity. “It may be,” he thought, “that my
mother is permitted to minister to me.”
He might have been agitated by the admission of the least ray of hope;
but hope was utterly excluded, and it was only when he thought of his
bereft father that his courage failed him.
But we must leave him to his solitude and silence, only interrupted by
the distant hootings of the owl and the heavy tread of the Pequod
chief, who spent the night in slowly pacing before the door of the
hut.
Magawisca and her companions were conducted to a wigwam standing on
that part of the plain on which they had first entered. It was
completely enclosed on three sides by dwarf oaks. In front there was a
little plantation of the edible luxuries of the savages. On entering
the hut they perceived it had but one occupant, a sick, emaciated old
woman, who was stretched on her mat, covered with skins. She raised
her head as the strangers entered, and at the sight of Faith Leslie
uttered a faint exclamation, deeming the fair creature a messenger
from the spirit-land; {130} but, being informed who they were and
whence they came, she made every sign and expression of courtesy to
them that her feeble strength permitted.
Her hut contained all that was essential to savage hospitality. A few
brands were burning on a hearth-stone in the middle of the apartment.
The smoke that found egress passed out by a hole in the centre of the
roof, over which a mat was skilfully adjusted, and turned to the
windward side by a cord that hung within. The old woman, in her long
pilgrimage, had accumulated stores of Indian riches: piles of
sleeping-mats lay in one corner; nicely-dressed skins garnished the
walls; baskets of all shapes and sizes, gayly decorated with rude
images of birds and flowers, contained dried fruits, medicinal herbs,
Indian corn, nuts, and game. A covered pail, made of folds of birch
bark, was filled with a kind of beer--a decoction of various roots and
aromatic shrubs. Neatly-turned wooden spoons and bowls, and culinary
utensils of clay, supplied all the demands of the inartificial
housewifery of savage life.
The travellers, directed by their old hostess, prepared their evening
repast--a short and simple process to an Indian; and, having satisfied
the cravings of hunger, they were all, with the exception of Magawisca
and one of the Mohawks, in a very short time stretched on their mats
and fast asleep.
Magawisca seated herself at the feet of the old woman, and had neither
spoken nor moved since she entered the hut. She watched anxiously and
impatiently {131} the movements of the Indian, whose appointed duty it
appeared to be to guard her. He placed a wooden bench against the mat
which served for a door, and stuffing his pipe with tobacco from a
pouch slung over his shoulder, and then filling a gourd with the
liquor in the pail, and placing it beside him, he quietly sat himself
down to his night-watch.
The old woman became restless, and her loud and repeated groans at
last withdrew Magawisca from her own miserable thoughts. She inquired
if she could do aught to allay her pain; the sufferer pointed to a jar
that stood on the embers, in which a medicinal preparation was
simmering. She motioned to Magawisca to give her a spoonful of the
liquor; she did so; and as she took it, “It is made,” she said, “of
all the plants on which the spirit of sleep has breathed;” and so it
seemed to be, for she had scarcely swallowed it when she fell asleep.
Once or twice she waked and murmured something, and once Magawisca
heard her say, “Hark to the wekolis![2] he is perched on the old oak
by the sacrifice-rock, and his cry is neither musical nor merry: a bad
sign in a bird.”
But all signs and portents were alike to Magawisca; every sound rung a
death-peal to her ear, and the hissing silence had in it the mystery
and fearfulness of death. The night wore slowly and painfully away, as
if, as in the fairy tale, the moments were counted by drops of heart’s
blood. But the most wearisome nights will end; the morning approached;
{132} the familiar notes of the birds of earliest dawn were heard, and
the twilight peeped through the crevices of the hut, when a new sound
fell on Magawisca’s startled ear. It was the slow, measured tread of
many feet. The poor girl now broke silence, and vehemently entreated
the Mohawk to let her pass the door, or at least to raise the mat.
He shook his head with a look of unconcern, as if it were the petulant
demand of a child, when the old woman, awakened by the noise, cried
out that she was dying; that she must have light and air; and the
Mohawk started up, impulsively, to raise the mat. It was held between
two poles that formed the door-posts; and, while he was disengaging
it, Magawisca, as if inspired, and quick as thought, poured the liquor
from the jar on the fire into the hollow of her hand, and dashed it
into the gourd which the Mohawk had just replenished. The narcotic was
boiling hot, but she did not cringe; she did not even feel it; and she
could scarcely repress a cry of joy when the savage turned round and
swallowed, at one draught, the contents of the cup.
Magawisca looked eagerly through the aperture, but, though the sound
of the footsteps had approached nearer, she saw no one. She saw
nothing but a gentle declivity that sloped to the plain, a few yards
from the hut, and was covered with a grove of trees; beyond and
peering above them were the hill and the sacrifice-rock; the morning
star, its rays not yet dimmed in the light of day, shed a soft
trembling beam on its summit. This beautiful star, alone in {133} the
heavens when all other lights were quenched, spoke to the
superstitious, or, rather, the imaginative spirit of Magawisca. “Star
of promise,” she thought, “thou dost still linger with us when day is
vanished, and now thou art there alone to proclaim the coming sun;
thou dost send in upon my soul a ray of hope; and though it be but as
the spider’s slender pathway, it shall sustain my courage.” She had
scarcely formed this resolution when she needed all its efficacy, for
the train whose footsteps she had heard appeared in full view.
First came her father, with the Housatonic chief; next, alone, and
walking with a firm, undaunted step, was Everell, his arms folded over
his breast, and his head a little inclined upward, so that Magawisca
fancied she saw his full eye turned heavenward; after him walked all
the men of the tribe, ranged according to their age, and the rank
assigned to each by his own exploits.
They were neither painted nor ornamented according to the common usage
at festivals and sacrifices, but everything had the air of hasty
preparation. Magawisca gazed in speechless despair. The procession
entered the wood, and for a few moments disappeared from her sight;
again they were visible, mounting the acclivity of the hill by a
winding, narrow footpath, shaded on either side by laurels. They now
walked singly and slowly, but to Magawisca their progress seemed rapid
as a falling avalanche. She felt that, if she were to remain pent in
that prison-house, her heart would burst, and she {134} sprang towards
the doorway in the hope of clearing her passage; but the Mohawk caught
her arm in his iron grasp, and putting her back, calmly retained his
station. She threw herself on her knees to him; she entreated, she
wept, but in vain: he looked on her with unmoved apathy. Already she
saw the foremost of the party had reached the rock, and were forming a
semicircle around it: again she appealed to her determined keeper, and
again he denied her petition, but with a faltering tongue and a
drooping eye.
Magawisca, in the urgency of a necessity that could brook no delay,
had forgotten, or regarded as useless, the sleeping potion she had
infused into the Mohawk’s draught; she now saw the powerful agent was
at work for her, and with that quickness of apprehension that made the
operations of her mind as rapid as the impulses of instinct, she
perceived that every emotion she excited but hindered the effect of
the potion. Suddenly seeming to relinquish all purpose and hope of
escape, she threw herself on a mat, and hid her face, burning with
agonizing impatience, in her mantle. There we must leave her, and join
that fearful company who were gathered together to witness what they
believed to be the execution of exact and necessary justice.
Seated around their sacrifice-rock--their holy of holies--they
listened to the sad story of the Pequod chief with dejected
countenances and downcast eyes, save when an involuntary glance turned
on Everell, who stood awaiting his fate, cruelly aggravated by {135}
every moment’s delay, with a quiet dignity and calm resignation that
would have become a hero or a saint. Surrounded by this dark cloud of
savages, his fair countenance kindled by holy inspiration, he looked
scarcely like a creature of earth.
There might have been among the spectators some who felt the silent
appeal of the helpless, courageous boy; some whose hearts moved them
to interpose to save the selected victim; but they were restrained by
their interpretation of natural justice, as controlling to them as our
artificial codes of laws to us.
Others, of a more cruel or more irritable disposition, when the Pequod
described his wrongs and depicted his sufferings, brandished their
tomahawks, and would have hurled them at the boy; but the chief said,
“Nay, brothers, the work is mine; he dies by my hand--for my
first-born--life for life; he dies by a single stroke, for thus was my
boy cut off. The blood of sachems is in his veins. He has the skin,
but not the soul of that mixed race, whose gratitude is like that
vanishing mist,” and he pointed to the vapour that was melting from
the mountain tops into the transparent ether; “and their promises like
this,” and he snapped a dead branch from the pine beside which he
stood, and broke it in fragments. “Boy as he is, he fought for his
mother as the eagle fights for its young. I watched him in the
mountain-path, when the blood gushed from his torn feet; not a word
from his smooth lip betrayed his pain.”
{136}
Mononotto embellished his victim with praises, as the ancients
wreathed theirs with flowers. He brandished his hatchet over Everell’s
head, and cried exultingly, “See, he flinches not. Thus stood my boy
when they flashed their sabres before his eyes and bade him betray his
father. Brothers: My people have told me I bore a woman’s heart
towards the enemy. Ye shall see. I will pour out this English boy’s
blood to the last drop, and give his flesh and bones to the dogs and
wolves.”
He then motioned to Everell to prostrate himself on the rock, his face
downward. In this position the boy would not see the descending
stroke. Even at this moment of dire vengeance the instincts of a
merciful nature asserted their rights.
Everell sunk calmly on his knees, not to supplicate life, but to
commend his soul to God. He clasped his hands together. He did not--he
could not speak; his soul was
“Rapt in still communion, that transcends
The imperfect offices of prayer.”
At this moment a sunbeam penetrated the trees that enclosed the area,
and fell athwart his brow and hair, kindling it with an almost
supernatural brightness. To the savages, this was a token that the
victim was accepted, and they sent forth a shout that rent the air.
Everell bent forward and pressed his forehead to the rock. The chief
raised the deadly weapon, when Magawisca, springing from the
precipitous side of the rock, screamed “Forbear!” and interposed her
arm. It was too late. The blow {137} was levelled--force and direction
given; the stroke, aimed at Everell’s neck, severed his defender’s
arm, and left him unharmed. The lopped, quivering member dropped over
the precipice. Mononotto staggered and fell senseless, and all the
savages, uttering horrible yells, rushed towards the fatal spot.
“Stand back!” cried Magawisca. “I have bought his life with my own.
Fly, Everell--nay, speak not, but fly--thither--to the east!” she
cried, more vehemently.
Everell’s faculties were paralyzed by a rapid succession of violent
emotions. He was conscious only of a feeling of mingled gratitude and
admiration for his preserver. He stood motionless, gazing on her. “I
die in vain, then,” she cried, in an accent of such despair that he
was roused. He threw his arms around her, and pressed her to his heart
as he would a sister that had redeemed his life with her own, and
then, tearing himself from her, he disappeared. No one offered to
follow him. The voice of nature rose from every heart, and, responding
to the justice of Magawisca’s claim, bade him “God speed!” To all it
seemed that his deliverance had been achieved by miraculous aid.
All--the dullest and coldest--paid involuntary homage to the heroic
girl, as if she were a superior being, guided and upheld by
supernatural power.
Everything short of miracle she had achieved. The moment the opiate
dulled the senses of her keeper, she escaped from the hut; and aware
that, if she attempted to penetrate to her father through the {138}
semicircular line of spectators that enclosed him, she should be
repulsed, and probably borne off the ground, she had taken the
desperate resolution of mounting the rock where only her approach
would be unperceived. She did not stop to ask herself if it were
possible; but, impelled by a determined spirit, or rather, we would
believe, by that inspiration that teaches the bird its unknown path,
and leads the goat, with its young, safely over the mountain crags,
she ascended the rock. There were crevices in it, but they seemed
scarcely sufficient to support the eagle with his grappling talon; and
twigs issuing from the fissures, but so slender that they waved like a
blade of grass under the weight of the young birds that made a rest on
them; and yet, such is the power of love, stronger than death, that
with these inadequate helps Magawisca scaled the rock and achieved her
generous purpose.