THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS.
BOOK I.
THE APOSTLE TO THE INDIANS.
CHAPTER I.
THE NEW ENGLAND MEETING.
Such as sit in darkness and the shadow of death. Bible.
ONE Sabbath morning more than two hundred years ago, the dawn broke clear and beautiful over New England. It was one of those lovely mornings that seem like a benediction, a smile of God upon the earth, so calm are they, so full of unutterable rest and quiet. Over the sea, with its end less line of beach and promontory washed softly by the ocean swells; over the towns of the coast, Boston and Salem, already large, giving splendid promise of the future; over the farms and hamlets of the interior, and into the rude clearings where the outer limits of civilization mingled with the primeval forest, came a flood of light as the sun rose above the blue line of eastern sea. And still beyond, across the Alleghanies, into the depth of the wilderness, passed the sweet, calm radiance, as if bearing a gleam of gospel sunshine to the Indians of the forest.
