Yes, replied Drake, I trust she is in the heaven that Cahoonshee and Betsy talks about. But I don’t know much about such things. I never had any mother to tell me about God and heaven. But Drake, you had a mother, and if she was a good mother, she would have told you all about the bible and God. My mother used to read to me how God made the world in six days, and everything there was in it. That people lived in a big garden, and were very good and happy. Then they got to doing naughty things, and God made it rain very hard and the people were drowned, all except one family, and they escaped in the ark. I suppose that it was just such a big rain that came on the Callicoon and drowned father and mother. But they wan’t bad, and I don’t see what he wanted to drown them for. This was a subject that Drake knew but little about, and he could think of nothing to say that would be consoling to the girl. But at last he said; Cahoonshee, the big Indian, will tell you all about those things. He knows. He has crossed the water in a big canoe. He studies books. Let us go to the house and talk with him. CHAPTER VIII. Cahoonshee on the Origin of Man. At the close of Chapter VI, we left Quick and Cahoonshee conversing by the light of a pine knot fire at Quick’s cabin on the Shinglekill. Here they smoked the pipe of peace, and pledged to each other eternal friendship. During the night it was arranged that the next morning they would go to the Heart Rock, on the Steynekill, and erect a cabin for Cahoonshee. The cabin was built a few rods from the Steneykill brook, near a spring. At this place Cahoonshee spent part of his time, and the balance at Quick’s. Thus, a mutual friendship was established between the white man and Indian that lasted through life. Cahoonshee keenly felt the degradation of his people. The education he had received in Europe had swept from his mind the Indian superstitions that were cherished and practiced by his fathers. He believed that all European nations were combined to drive the Indian from the forest and appropriate the land to themselves. Yet he held to the religion of his fathers, really seeing no difference between the white man’s God and the Indian’s Great Spirit. He believed in a first cause. This cause began to operate at the beginning of time. That time began when matter began to move. He believed that this first cause was an intelligent cause. He ignored nothingness—or rather claimed that there was no such thing as nothing. He rejected the common term of Spirit, and advocated that a Spirit was an actual entity, although as invisible as air or gas. That this Spirit, this entity was substance, although it could neither be seen, heard or felt. That this entity possessed certain attributes, among which were power, plan and design.