One was a powerful athletic young man, with a countenance strikingly handsome, and embrowned by exercise and exposure: his dress was a hunting shirt, and leggings of deer–skin; his curling brown locks escaped from under a cap of wolf–skin; and his mocassins, firmly secured round the ankle, were made from the tough hide of a bear: he carried in his hand a short rifle of heavy calibre, and an ornamented couteau–de–chasse hung at his belt. His companion, lower in stature, but broad, sinewy, and weather–beaten, seemed to be some fifteen or twenty years the elder: his dress was of the same material, but more soiled and worn; his rifle was longer and heavier; and his whole appearance that of a man to whom all inclemencies of season were indifferent, all the dangers and hardships of a western hunter’s life familiar; but the most remarkable part of his equipment was an enormous axe, the handle studded with nails, and the head firmly riveted with iron hoops. “Well, Master Reginald,” said the latter; “we must hope to find old Michael and his ferry–boat at the Passage des Rochers, for the river is much swollen, and we might not easily swim it with dry powder.” “What reason have you to doubt old Michael’s being found at his post?” said Reginald: “we have often crossed there, and have seldom found him absent.” “True, master; but he has of late become very lazy; and he prefers sitting by his fire, and exchanging a bottle of fire–water with a strolling Ingian for half a dozen good skins, to tugging a great flat–bottomed boat across the Muskingum during the March floods.” “Baptiste,” said the young man, “it grieves me to see the reckless avidity with which spirits are sought by the Indians; and the violence, outrage, and misery which is the general consequence of their dram–drinking.” “Why you see, there is something very good in a cup of West Ingy rum.” Here Baptiste’s hard features were twisted into a grin irresistibly comic, and he proceeded: “It warms the stomach and the heart; and the savages, when they once taste it, suck at a bottle by instinct, as natural as a six–weeks’ cub at his dam. I often wonder, Master Reginald, why you spoil that fine _eau de vie_ which little Perrot puts into your hunting flask, by mixing with it a quantity of water! In my last trip to the mountains, where I was first guide and turpret[2], they gave me a taste now and then, and I never found it do me harm; but the nature of an Ingian is different, you know.” “Well, Baptiste,” said Reginald, smiling at his follower’s defence of his favourite beverage; “I will say that I never knew you to take more than you could carry; but your head is as strong as your back, and you sometimes prove the strength of both.”