“A soldier’s calling is honorable, provided he has fi’t only on the side of right,” returned the Pathfinder; “and as the Frenchers are always wrong, and his sacred Majesty and these colonies are always right, I take it the Sergeant has a quiet conscience as well as a good character.  I have never slept more sweetly than when I have fi’t the Mingos, though it is the law with me to fight always like a white man and never like an Indian.  The Sarpent, here, has his fashions, and I have mine; and yet have we fi’t side by side these many years; without either thinking a hard thought consarning the other’s ways.  I tell him there is but one heaven and one hell, notwithstanding his traditions, though there are many paths to both.”

“That is rational; and he is bound to believe you, though, I fancy, most of the roads to the last are on dry land.  The sea is what my poor sister Bridget used to call a ‘purifying place,’ and one is out of the way of temptation when out of sight of land.  I doubt if as much can be said in favor of your lakes up hereaway.”

“That towns and settlements lead to sin, I will allow; but our lakes are bordered by the forests, and one is every day called upon to worship God in such a temple.  That men are not always the same, even in the wilderness, I must admit for the difference between a Mingo and a Delaware is as plain to be seen as the difference between the sun and the moon.  I am glad, friend Cap, that we have met, however, if it be only that you may tell the Big Sarpent here that there are lakes in which the water is salt.  We have been pretty much of one mind since our acquaintance began, and if the Mohican has only half the faith in me that I have in him, he believes all that I have told him touching the white men’s ways and natur’s laws; but it has always seemed to me that none of the red-skins have given as free a belief as an honest man likes to the accounts of the Big Salt Lakes, and to that of their being rivers that flow up stream.”

“This comes of getting things wrong end foremost,” answered Cap, with a condescending nod.  “You have thought of your lakes and rifts as the ship; and of the ocean and the tides as the boat.  Neither Arrowhead nor the Serpent need doubt what you have said concerning both, though I confess myself to some difficulty in swallowing the tale about there being inland seas at all, and still more that there is any sea of fresh water.  I have come this long journey as much to satisfy my own eyes concerning these facts, as to oblige the Sergeant and Magnet, though the first was my sister’s husband, and I love the last like a child.”