The elevation was similar to those with which the reader became familiar long ago, and the sun had not yet reached the horizon when the lithe warrior had climbed to the crest of the ridge, and was scanning the wilderness which opened to the south and west. He was in a region where he was warranted in looking for Indian villages, and his penetrating eyes traveled over the area with a minuteness of search hardly imaginable by the reader. The country was so broken by mountain, hill, and wood, that the survey was much less extended than would be supposed. He was disappointed in one respect, however: he could detect no Indian village in the whole range of vision.