Before the dawn of the day fixed on for her marriage, Rebecca left her chamber, and hastened along the banks of the river to the jutting promontory that she so much loved. Leaning there upon the side of a rock, she gave vent to all those feelings which spring up in the heart of a girl who stands upon the verge of marriage. Welling up from that heart were the waters of pure, holy affection for Harris, and of deep, abiding love for William. There was no want of all true feelings—no doubt of the high deservings of her lover. But Rebecca’s education was imperfect; it had never eradicated the strong feelings for her own people; it had led her to see how rapid must be their decay, but it had not made her cling with undivided love to those whose superiority in certain points was exhibiting itself in the destruction of the natives; for she saw that the friendship of the whites was as fatal to the Indians as was their enmity. The lands passed as fast by cession as by conquest, and vices were sent with the wampum of peace as readily as with the weapon of war. And while she felt that she could apply no remedy, or _become_ a preventive, she yet felt for those whose blood was in her veins—whose fathers’ fame had been her glory. “Oh, children of the forest,” said she, as she bent her eyes upon mountains and table lands above, “ye are passing away like the leaves of autumn. The frosts and the sunshine are alike fatal to you, and ere long you will be known only by your decay. Men will _tell_ of your glories—but who shall _see_ them? Dim shadows yet linger on the forest edge, and I catch the view of half fading forms as I look along the valley of the stream. Are these the spirits of my fathers come to chide me, their daughter, for my apostacy? Alas! what an apostacy is that of their sons, who retain the customs of the tribes, and yet adopt the vices of the whites.” “The light of another day is springing up, and a thousand shapes are visible; are these spirit-hunters of the red men—do they sanctify the night by their chase? They are not like the red men of those days. Mighty ones they are, and they pursue the mammoth for their sport. But how they depart before the coming light, as their descendants waste in the influence of the arts of the white men!”