Page:The last of the Mohicans (1826 Volume 2).djvu/48

 Mingo might prove a losing game, compared to the honesty of a Delaware."

When the travellers had reached the verge of the precipice, they saw, at a glance, the truth of the scout's declaration, and the admirable foresight with which he had led them to their commanding station.

The mountain on which they stood elevated perhaps a thousand feet in the air, was a high cone, that rose a little in advance of that range which reached for miles along the western shores of the lake, until meeting its sister piles beyond the water, it ran off far towards the Canadas, in confused and broken masses of rock, which were thinly sprinkled with evergreens. Immediately at the feet of the party, the southern shore of the Horican swept in a broad semi-circle, from mountain to mountain, marking a wide strand, that soon rose into an uneven and somewhat elevated plain. To the north stretched the limpid, and, as it appeared from that dizzy height, the narrow sheet of the "holy lake," indented with numberless