The Brave, who was smitten with the charms of the fair creature, pressing to her side, whispered that he loved her better than all the world, and wished her to become the wife of his bosom. Then he painted, to her willing ear, the charms of his native land, and spoke of the tall old oaks which threw their giant shade over the banks of the gentle and placid river, and the many thick glades filled with lusty deer, and lakes stocked with delicious wild fowl, which were to be found within the hunting-grounds of his nation. He told her of the plenty that reigned in the cabins of the Andirondacks, and how much better their women fared than those of the surrounding tribes. The Daughter of the Flood smiled sweetly on the youth, and tears, the first she had ever shed--and sighs, the first she had ever breathed--proofs of her having acquired a human soul--stole to her heart and her eyes.
And now she had received a soul, and become possessed of those faculties which confer pleasure and pain, and create for their possessor happiness and misery, and joy and sorrow. She was now alive to the hopes and fears which exalt or depress existence--had tears for those that wept, and a laugh for those that laughed. She, who entered that assembly of warriors, fearless as an eagle seated on the top of a lofty pine, now at once, in the twinkling of an eye, became filled with trembling, and alarm, and apprehension, and strove to hide her blushes by half hiding her face in the bosom of him she loved.
But pride, which has often interrupted the course of love, as well as led to the downfall of nations, crept into the councils of the Andirondacks, and they refused to permit the young warrior to take to wife the maiden who was not of mortal parentage. They said that she was of the blood of the spirits of the cataract, of a race who had delighted to shed a cold and pestilential vapour over the villages of their nation, and had destroyed several Andirondacks, whose blood remained unrevenged. In vain did the youth plead his love; in vain did he show, that if the spirits of the flood warred on their neighbours, who were unable to inflict a wound on their adversaries, it furnished no reason why the beautiful maiden, so lovely and so inoffensive, should be banned. She had not injured, then why should she be spurned? But his argument availed not to influence the warriors, or to bend their stern hearts to pity. They drove the fair Menana from the arms of him she loved best, and, exerting the authority, so potent among the red men of the wilderness, of a father, and of chiefs, and of elders, they carried away the lover from the village of the Ottawas, thus dividing those whom the Great Being had so clearly created for each other.