GEORGE W. SIMPKINS. 69 



for they jump a hundred feet at a lick, an' lightnin' 'd have 

 a hard time to ketch 'em/' 



The days were filled with talk of the coming expedi- 

 tion into a land where the deer had not only lived, but had 

 been seen feeding among the cows; and the nights were 

 filled with visions of deer whose horns were as high and 

 branching as an oak, and the squirrels were leaping from 

 tine to tine, disturbing the partridges which were nesting 

 in the antlers. Even dreams have ends to them, whether 

 of sport, fame or wealth. The long-looked-for day came, 

 and the start was made. At this day all is blank until 

 Glens Falls was reached, and whether we started from 

 Albany by rail, canal or stage is uncertain. The ecstatic 

 pleasure of at last really going to this promised land of 

 fish and game obliterated all such purely mechanical ideas 

 as the ways to get there. But Glens Falls was a place to 

 be looked out for with open eyes. Here was the cave in 

 which Hawk-Eye and Uncas stood off the Mingoes! 

 Here was the precipice from which Uncas killed the 

 Mingo who fell from an overhanging tree, and Uncas was 

 chided by the scout for hitting him some "two inches be- 

 low" the painted belt line, as memory recalls the story. 



Mother went up with me. She was entirely ignorant 

 of the history of that terrible night in the cavern when 

 the screams of the tortured horses directed the rescuers 

 to the cave, and actually seemed indifferent about visiting 

 places which to me were not only historic, but sacred. 



Here I must pause and look back. At that time the 

 difference between history and fiction was not a strictly 

 defined line. My ideas of such things were crude. To- 

 day, forty-seven years later, when one should be able to 

 discriminate between fact and fancy in what passes for 

 history, that line seems as misty as ever. Prescott's "Con- 

 quest of Mexico" is grand, but we do not find the evidence 



