“You are wrong, friend Cap, very wrong, to distrust the power of God in any thing,” returned Pathfinder earnestly.  “They that live in the settlements and the towns have confined and unjust opinions consarning the might of His hand; but we, who pass our time in His very presence, as it might be, see things differently —­ I mean, such of us as have white natur’s.  A red-skin has his notions, and it is right that it should be so; and if they are not exactly the same as a Christian white man’s, there is no harm in it.  Still, there are matters which belong altogether to the ordering of God’s providence; and these salt and fresh-water lakes are some of them.  I do not pretend to account for these things, but I think it the duty of all to believe in them.”

“Hold on there, Master Pathfinder,” interrupted Cap, not without some heat; “in the way of a proper and manly faith, I will turn my back on no one, when afloat.  Although more accustomed to make all snug aloft, and to show the proper canvas, than to pray when the hurricane comes, I know that we are but helpless mortals at times, and I hope I pay reverence where reverence is due.  All I mean to say is this:  that, being accustomed to see water in large bodies salt, I should like to taste it before I can believe it to be fresh.”

“God has given the salt lick to the deer; and He has given to man, red-skin and white, the delicious spring at which to slake his thirst.  It is unreasonable to think that He may not have given lakes of pure water to the west, and lakes of impure water to the east.”

Cap was awed, in spite of his overweening dogmatism, by the earnest simplicity of the Pathfinder, though he did not relish the idea of believing a fact which, for many years, he had pertinaciously insisted could not be true.  Unwilling to give up the point and, at the same time, unable to maintain it against a reasoning to which he was unaccustomed, and which possessed equally the force of truth, faith, and probability, he was glad to get rid of the subject by evasion.

“Well, well, friend Pathfinder,” said he, “we will leave the argument where it is; and we can try the water when we once reach it.  Only mark my words —­ I do not say that it may not be fresh on the surface; the Atlantic is sometimes fresh on the surface, near the mouths of great rivers; but, rely on it, I shall show you a way of tasting the water many fathoms deep, of which you never dreamed; and then we shall know more about it.”

The guide seemed content to let the matter rest, and the conversation changed.

“We are not over-conceited consarning our gifts,” observed the Pathfinder, after a short pause, “and well know that such as live in the towns, and near the sea —­ "

“On the sea,” interrupted Cap.