215 

 THE GRAVE OF THE INDIAN KING. 



" When the hunter shall sit by the mound, and produce his food at noon - 

 'Some warrior rests here,' he will say, ' and my fame shall live in his praise.'" 



OSSIAN. 



NATURE seems to have made the fair west in one of her sweetest 

 anil kindest moods. Beyond the Onondaga hills, for a long distance, 

 there are no mountains lilting their bleak and rugged summits to 

 the clouds to break the landscape ; no beetiing'cliffs and shagged 

 precipices frowning upon the startled beholder; no dark and gloomy 

 ravines, " horrid with fern, and intricate with thorn ;" but the whole 

 region, for hundreds of miles, presents a scene of placid and unin- 

 terrupted beauty, varied only by gentle hills and moderate declivities, 

 broad plains and delightful lakes fit residences for the Naiads and 

 traversed by rivers, which wend their way tranquilly to the north, 

 until, by one mighty bound they leap from the table-land into the 

 embrace of the majestic Ontario, and are lost in the immensity of its 

 waters. But, of all the lesser lakes with which this charming coun- 

 try has been rendered thus picturesque and delightful, Skaneatelas 

 is deemed by all travellers the most beautiful. Its very name, in 

 the language of the proud race who once ranged the forests, and boun- 

 ded along its shores with the lofty tread of heaven's nobility, or dart- 

 ed across its bright surface in the light canoe with the swiftness of 

 an arrow, signifies the LAKE OF BEAUTY. It is true that, being thus 

 divested of the wildness and grandeur of mountain scenery, the stran- 

 ger's attention is less powerfully awakened at the first view, than if 

 it had been cast among the adamantine towers of a more rugged re- 

 gion ; but there is in the country by which it is surrounded a quiet 

 loveliness, an air of repose, eminently calculated to please and to 

 captivate the heart. The lands descend on all sides in a gentle slope 

 to the margin of the lake, forming as it were a spacious amphitheatre 

 having a fountain of liquid silver sparkling in its bosom. Its shores 

 are alternately beautified by the hand of man with cultivated fields, 

 adorned by the living verdure of the meadow, or fringed with banks 

 of flowers ; while to augment the charm of variety, some of Nature's 

 own stately picturings are left, consisting of groves of the primitive 

 forest, here towering aloft in giant pride, and there overhanging 

 the shore, and dipping their pendant branches in the clear cool ele- 

 ment, in which every object is reflected with fresh and vivid distinct- 

 ness. Combining so many of the elements of beauty, few spots in 

 the broad map of the occidental world have equal pretensions to 

 admiration. Still, however, in the eye of untutored man, how much 

 more beautiful must the Skaneatelas have been before the dense 



