Page:Sketch of Connecticut, Forty Years Since.djvu/191

canoe from Saybrook, under cover of darkness, by an enterprising man of the name of Leffingwell, to whom Uncas, as a testimony of gratitude, gave a large tract of land, comprising the whole of the present town of N———. There that king sat, on the throne furnished by Nature, with no guard, but the shapeless columns of stone, whose mossy helmets waved over him, and no canopy but the midnight cloud, listening with throbbing heart, for the dash of that oar, on which hung his only hope. At a distance were his famishing people, and his besieging foes holding the war-dance, which preceded their morning battle, and their expected victory. On the same seat, after the lapse of more than a hundred years, reclined this lonely Chief of a diminished and dispersed tribe. Behind him was no fort, no warriours. Upon the still waters, where his eye rested, was no hope. The setting Sun threw his lustre over them for a moment, as if they were an expanse of liquid silver, and illumined the bold, broad forehead of the Chieftain, half-hidden by his dark clustering locks, over which a slight tinge of snow had been scattered, not by time, but by sorrow. He watched the last rays, and as they faded into twilight exclaimed in agony, "Thou shalt rise again in glory; but for us there is no returning,—no dawn." He concealed his brow with his hands, and his bursts of grief were long, and passionate. None were there to report, "I saw my Chief mourning." Day, at her return, found him in the same spot in the same attitude, as when she sank to repose. Starting, as her beams