and rocking, as if she would have rolled her mast overboard, and seemed in continual danger either of upsetting or of running on shore.  In this way she drove quite through the Highlands, until she had passed Pollopol’s Island, where, it is said, the jurisdiction of the Dunderberg potentate ceases.  No sooner had she passed this bourn than the little hat spun up into the air like a top, whirled up all the clouds into a vortex, and hurried them back to the summit of the Dunderberg, while the sloop righted herself and sailed on as quietly as if in a mill-pond.  Nothing saved her from utter wreck but the fortunate circumstance of having a horse-shoe nailed against the mast—­a wise precaution against evil spirits, since adopted by all the Dutch captains that navigate this haunted river.

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.

THE RENDEZVOUS.

[From The Deerslayer.]

In the position in which the ark had now got, the castle was concealed from view by the projection of a point, as, indeed, was the northern extremity of the lake itself.  A respectable mountain, forest-clad, and rounded like all the rest, limited the view in that direction, stretching immediately across the whole of the fair scene,[1] with the exception of a deep bay that passed its western end, lengthening the basin for more than a mile.  The manner in which the water flowed out of the lake, beneath the leafy arches of the trees that lined the sides of the stream, has already been mentioned, and it has also been said that the rock, which was a favorite place of rendezvous throughout all that region, and where Deerslayer now expected to meet his friend, stood near this outlet and no great distance from the shore.  It was a large isolated stone that rested on the bottom of the lake, apparently left there when the waters tore away the earth from around it, in forcing for themselves a passage down the river, and which had obtained its shape from the action of the elements during the slow progress of centuries.  The height of this rock could scarcely equal six feet, and, as has been said, its shape was not unlike that which is usually given to bee-hives or to a hay-cock.  The latter, indeed, gives the best idea, not only of its form, but of its dimensions.  It stood, and still stands, for we are writing of real scenes, within fifty feet of the bank, and in water that was only two feet in depth, though there were seasons in which its rounded apex, if such a term can properly be used, was covered by the lake.  Many of the trees stretched so far forward as almost to blend the rock with the shore, when seen from a little distance; and one tall pine in particular overhung it in a way to form a noble and appropriate canopy to a seat that had held many a forest chieftain, during the long succession of ages in which America and all it contained existed apart in mysterious solitude, a world by itself, equally without a familiar history and without an origin that the annals of man can catch.