Status Updates From The Last of the Mohicans

"the pale face, whose eyes can make night as day, and level the clouds to the mists of the springs". So, meaning that his vaunted eyesight soars above the clouds?

I enjoy reading Cooper, despite his wooden, overdrawn characters. His creation of historical fiction is engaging and illuminates the whole book. But some of his passages are overdone to the point of incomprehensible: It's taken me overnight and multiple re-reads to give some sense to Hawk-eye's eulogy of himself in anticipation of extermination by the Mingoes as

Maybe I got confused, but pls tell me why this man was belting a hymn while hiding from the Huron tribe in a cavern…. Spoiler - they got caught????