And so in company with a French hunter in a canoe, Hamish went down the long reaches of the Tsullakee River, coming after many days to their destination, to find only disappointment and a gnawing doubt, and a strange, palsying numbness of despair. For the French traders here, reading Monsieur Galette's letter, looked at one another with grave faces and collogued together, and finally became of the opinion that the members of the family he sought were somewhere--oh, far away!--in the country where now dwelt the expatriated Shawnees, and that region, so great an Indian traveler as he was must know was inaccessible now in the winter season. It would be well for him to dismiss the matter from his mind, and stay with them for the present; he could engage in the fur trade; his society would be appreciated. With the well-meaning French flattery they protested that he spoke the French language so well--they made him upon his proficiency their felicitations. Poor Hamish ought to have known from this statement what value to attach to what they said otherwise, conscious as he was how his verbs and pronouns disagreed, and dislocated the sense of his remarks, and popped up and down out of place, like a lot of puppets on a disorganized system of wires. These traders were not snuffy nor lachrymose; they were of a gay disposition and also wore ear-rings--but they all looked sorrowfully at him when he left them, and he thought one was minded to disclose something withheld. And so down and down the Tsullakee River he went, and after the junction of the great tributary with the Ohio, he plied his paddle against the strong current and with the French hunter came into the placid waters of the beautiful Sewanee, or Cumberland, flouted by the north wind, his way winding for many miles in densest wintry solitudes. For this was the great hunting-ground of the Cherokee nation and absolutely without population. His adventures were few and slight until he fell in with Daniel Boon, camping that year near the head waters of the Sewanee, who listened to his story with grave concern and a sane and effective sympathy. He, too, advised the cessation of these ceaseless wanderings, but he thought Stuart's letter evasive, somehow, and counseled the boy to write to him once more, detailing these long searches and their futility. Hamish had always realized that Stuart's sentiments, although by no means shallow, for he was warmly attached to his friends, were simple, direct, devoid of the subtlety that sometimes characterized his mental processes. Life to him was precious, a privilege, and its environment the mere incident.