AHWANEGA.
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��hereabout, a.nd among the villagers, as "The Jumping-off Place;" but by the Indians, those owners and natives of these mountains and valleys in the years long since forgotten and unregistered, save in the successive rings of the old oaks or the accumulated moss upon the ancient rocks it was called "Ahwanega", meaning "The Lover's Leap." I remem- ber once, when a boy, of climbing to the summit upon one glorious autumn day, just such a one as this has been, where the sky was deep blue, and the air was clear, and a dreamy softness hung over vale and hill ; the foliage, untouched by frost, was shedding over all it summer- garnered, sunshine glories ; I wondered then, if that "Upper Country" of which we know only in our dreams, could ex- ceed the delights of this. I was younger then by many years, and was in humor to be won by the lonely and lovely, by the beautiful and true. Time has sped along since those days, and I am now in and of the world; have passed well along in the journey of life, but it is pleasant to pause and look back from the hills of the present into the valleys of the past, for there are memories springing up from the experiences of those years that it gladdens our hearts to recall ; there are joys and loves intertwined with the sor- rows and youthful longings, that we would keep ever fresh and green. But I am forgetting my legend among these episodes.
It was in a year unrecorded, and yet it matters not that it should be nameless, since they reckoned not years, those men of the forest, as do we, and their traditions, and important historical events, were only preserved by being repeated around their council fires and in their wigwams; but it was in the long ago that a young chief from one of the tribes, whose home was on the banks of the Connecticut, and whose lands and hunting grounds ex- tended far toward the setting sun, wan- dering upon a far trail, came into the country of the Mohawks ; he was of no common descent, for he boasted that in his veins ran the blood of the "Narragan- setts" and of the great "Wyandancee" of the "Montauks" The stranger was warmly welcomed by the young men
��and the warriors of the tribe, and by the old chief, in whose lodge he ate dried vension and bear meat, brought by the hands of the chieftain's own daughter. With longing eyes he gazed upon the lithe form, the ruddy cheeks and the raven hair of the maiden, and ere the crescent moon had passed its full, he had won her love, and a promise to return with him to his home and his lodge, far away, a journey of many suns beyond the eastern mountains.
But the old chief, her father, was not so easily won, and she was already prom- ised to a young warrior of a neighboring tribe, although she knew him not, or aught of the royal decree ; so the suit of the lover was scornfully denied and he was driven in wrath from the royal lodge. But the love of the Indian maid- en was strong and the heart of her lover was brave, and it was agreed that at the end of a day's journey on the banks of the "Hoosic," he should await her com- ing in her own canoe, paddled by her own hands. The promise was kept and ere many suns had come and gone, a great feast was prepared by the Mohe- gan braves, in honor of the successful hunt of their heroic chief. Young men and maidens danced their wild dances and sung the war songs of their tribe, while the gray haired men and matrons old, told o'er the exploits in the chase and in the bloody fight, of their valliant warriors.
Suddenly, signal fires flashed out from the distant hill tops, and rumors came re- porting the approach of two thousand Mohawks, painted and plumed for battle and led by a brother and the rejected lover of the maiden. Then followed one of those long and bloody fights in which the early inhabitants of our country so often engaged; not heralded by the booming of cannon or the rattling of musketry, or distinguished by the march- ing and countermarching of vast armies, as in modern times ; but the forest still- ness was broken by the wild war-whoop of contending savages, and the death yells of the vanquished, as here, a stout stout old man was sent to the happy hunting grounds, by the murderous war- club— there, a hatchet crushed the skull
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