"No, no, John," said Natty, " I was no chief, seeing that I know'd nothing of scholarship, and had a white skin. But it was a comfortable hunting-ground then, lad, and would have been so to this day, but for the money of Marmaduke Temple, and, may be, the twisty ways of the law."
"It must have been a sight of melancholy pleasure, indeed," said Edwards, while his eye roved along the shores and over the hills, where the clearings, groaning with the golden corn, were cheering the forests with the signs of life, "to have roamed over these mountains, and along this sheet of beautiful water, without a living soul to speak to, or to thwart your humour."
"Haven't I said it was cheerful!" said Leather-stocking. "Yes, yes—when the trees begun to be kivered with the leaves, and the ice was out of the lake, it was a second paradise. I have travelled the woods for fifty-three year, and have made them my home for more than forty, and I can say that I have met but one place that was more to rny liking; and that was only to eyesight, and not for hunting or fishing."
"And where was that?" asked Edwards.
"Where! why up on the Cattskills. I used often to go up into the mountains after wolves' skins, and bears; once they bought me to get them a stuffed painter; and so I often went. There's a place in them hills that I used to climb to when I wanted to see the carryings on of the world, that would well pay any man for a barked shin or a torn moccasin. You know the Cattskills, lad, for you must have seen them on your left, as you followed the river up from York, looking as blue as a piece of clear sky, and holding the clouds on their tops, as the smoke curls over
