 the beast
they had deserted, and made such progress in the pursuit, as the difficulties of
the path permitted.
    They soon began to ascend; but as the motion had a tendency to revive the
dormant faculties of her sister, the attention of Cora was too much divided
between the tenderest solicitude in her behalf, and in listening to the cries,
which were still too audible on the plain, to note the direction in which they
journeyed. When, however, they gained the flattened surface of the mountain top,
and approached the eastern precipice, she recognised the spot to which she had,
once before, been led, under the more friendly auspices of the scout. Here Magua
suffered them to dismount, and, notwithstanding their own captivity, the
curiosity which seems inseparable from horror, induced them to gaze at the
sickening sight below.
    The cruel work was still unchecked. On every side the captured were flying
before their relentless persecutors, while the armed columns of the Christian
King stood fast, in an apathy which has never been explained, and which has left
an immoveable blot on the, otherwise, fair escutcheon of their leader. Nor was
the sword of death stayed, until cupidity got the mastery of revenge. Then,
indeed, the shrieks of the wounded, and the yells of their murderers, grew less
frequent, until finally the cries of horror were lost to their ear, or were
drowned in the loud, long and piercing whoops of the triumphant savages.22
 

                                 Chapter XVIII

 »Why, any thing:
 An honourable murderer, if you will;
 For nought I did in hate, but all in honour.«
                                                          Othello, V.ii.294-295.
 
The bloody and inhuman scene rather incidentally mentioned than described, in
the preceding chapter, is conspicuous in the pages of colonial history, by the
merited title of »The massacre of William Henry.« It so far deepened the stain
which a previous and very similar event had left upon the reputation of the
French commander, that it was not entirely erased by his early and glorious
death. It is now becoming obscured by time; and thousands, who know that
Montcalm died like a hero on the plains of Abraham, have yet to learn how much
he was deficient in that moral courage, without which no man can be truly great.
Pages might be written to prove, from this illustrious example, the defects of
human excellence; to show how easy it is for generous sentiments, high courtesy,
and chivalrous courage, to lose their influence beneath the chilling blight of
selfishness, and to exhibit to the world a man who
