Whilst they were puffing out clouds of smoke, and enjoying greatly the pleasure which an Indian so covets, one of them, whose sight was keener than the rest, casting his eye far over the western wilderness, cried out, that he saw two somethings whose heads peered far above the woods. Very soon the rest of the people assembled at the hill Gerundewagh were able to see the same somethings, which resembled much the trunks of trees which have been divested of their branches, and look out in the blush of the morning through the vapours of a damp valley. What they were no human tongue could tell, but it was seen that they were approaching the hill Gerundewagh. As the heads came nearer, people were seen flying before them, and the heads following in quick pursuit. At length the twice twenty-four on the hill were able to see that the heads belonged to two enormous snakes, which were moving in devious paths about the land, devouring the inhabitants as fast as they were able to discover and swallow them. Seeing this, and the danger to which they were exposed of becoming also food for the monsters, they set about fortifying the high hill Gerundewagh, that their lives might be safe from the appalling danger, and within their fortification they collected all sorts of defensive materials. Having made themselves tolerably secure, they had leisure to view the war of extermination, which the snakes waged with the sons of the land who were not thus protected.
In the mean time, the snakes, having discovered by their acute power of smelling distant objects that the hill Gerundewagh contained human bodies, with whose flesh they were now become much in love, they immediately bent their course to it. In coming thither, they were compelled to cross, or rather to come down the river Mohawk, which, upon their thus getting lengthways of it, diverted from its natural course, overflowed its banks, sweeping away every impediment, and forming those beautiful meadows which have remained ever since covered with a robe of green. Having at length reached the hill, around whose base they threw themselves in many coils, they commenced the work of death by poisoning the air with their pernicious breath. Soon the atmosphere, which before had been pure, was changed in its nature; appearances resembling the motions of the waves of the great lake Superior when slightly agitated in the hot mornings of summer were seen in the horizon, and have never left it. Before, the rains descended in soft showers in the pauses of gentle winds, now they fell in torrents, accompanied with howling tempests and cold hurricanes. Lightnings, which before only played across the horizon, as the red light of autumn evenings streaks the northern sky, now rent asunder the flinty rock, and rived the knotty oak. Men, who had before died only of old age, now poisoned by the breath of the monsters, fell sick in the morning of life, with the brightness of youthful hope in their eye, and the down of unripe years on their cheek. The hair now often grew grey ere the knee became feeble; the teeth rotted out while there was enough to put between them; the eye often failed to see the beautiful objects, and the ear to drink in the soft sounds, which the Great Master of all created for the food of each. The heart now grew sometimes to be trembling and irresolute, and the soul to have its visions of infelicity. But I speak of after-time; first let me talk of that which is first.