The Leatherstocking Tales II Read online

  JAMES FENIMORE COOPER

  THE LEATHERSTOCKING TALES

  VOLUME II

  The Pathfinder: or, The Inland Sea

  The Deerslayer: or, The First War-Path

  Blake Nevius, editor

  THE LIBRARY OF AMERICA

  Volume compilation, notes, and chronology copyright © 1985 by Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., New York, N.Y.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced commercially by offset-lithographic or equivalent copying devices without the permission of the publisher.

  The texts of The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer are copyright © 1981 and 1985 by the State University of New York Press. All rights reserved.

  THE LIBRARY OF AMERICA, a nonprofit publisher, is dedicated to publishing, and keeping in print, authoritative editions of America's best and most significant writing. Each year the Library adds new volumes to its collection of essential works by America's foremost novelists, poets, essayists, journalists, and statesmen.

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  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 85–25060 (print)

  For cataloging information, see end of Notes section.

  eISBN 978–1–59853–225–8

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  The texts in this volume are from The Writings of James Fenimore Cooper, edited by James Franklin Beard, Editor-in-Chief, and James P. Elliott, Chief Textual Editor, sponsored by Clark University and the American Antiquarian Society, and published by the State University of New York Press. The text of The Pathfinder was edited by Richard Dilworth Rust, and the text of The Deerslayer was edited by Lance Schachterle, Kent P. Ljungquist, and James A. Kilby.

  James Fenimore Cooper’s

  The Leatherstocking Tales: Volume Two

  is kept in print in memory of

  JOHN C. HUGHES

  (1891–1971)

  by a gift from

  J. Lawrence and Rose Hughes

  to the Guardians of American Letters Fund,

  established by The Library of America

  to ensure that every volume in the series

  will be permanently available.

  Contents

  The Pathfinder: or, The Inland Sea

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  The Deerslayer: or, The First War-Path

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chronology

  Note on the Texts

  Notes

  Readers who wish to follow the chronological order of Natty Bumppo’s career should read The Leatherstocking Tales in the following sequence: The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneers, and The Prairie.

  THE PATHFINDER

  or, The Inland Sea

  —Here the heart

  May give a useful lesson to the head,

  And Learning wiser grow without his books.

  Cowper, The Task, VI, ll. 86–88.

  Preface

  * * *

  THE PLAN of this tale suggested itself to the writer, many years since, though the details are altogether of recent invention. The idea of associating seamen and savages, in incidents that might be supposed characteristic of the Great Lakes, having been mentioned to a publisher, the latter obtained something like a pledge from the author to carry out the design, at some future day, which pledge is now tardily and imperfectly redeemed.

  The reader may recognize an old friend, under new circumstances, in the principal character of this legend. If the exhibition made of this old acquaintance, in the novel circumstances in which he now appears, should be found not to lessen his favor with the public, it will be a source of extreme gratification to the writer, since he has an interest in the individual in question, that falls little short of reality. It is not an easy task, however, to reproduce the same character in four separate works, and to maintain the peculiarities that are indispensable to identity, without incurring a risk of fatiguing the reader with sameness, and the present experiment has been so long delayed, quite as much from doubts of its success, as from any other cause. In this, as in every other undertaking, it must be the “end” that will “crown the work.”

  The Indian character has so little variety, that it has been my object to avoid dwelling on it too much, on the present occasion. Its association with the sailor, too, it is feared, will be found to have more novelty than interest.

  It may strike the novice as an anachronism, to place vessels on Ontario, in the middle of the eighteenth century, but, in this particular, facts will fully bear out all the licence of the fiction. Although the precise vessels mentioned in these pages may never have existed on that water, or anywhere else, others so nearly resembling them are known to have navigated that inland sea, even at a period much earlier than the one just mentioned, as to form a sufficient authority for their introduction into a work of fiction. It is a fact not generally remembered, however well known it may be, that there are isolated spots, along the line of the great lakes that date, as settlements, as far back, as many of the oldest American towns, and which were the seats of a species of civilization, long before the greater portion of even the original states was rescued from the wilderness.

  Ontario, in our own times, has been the scene of important naval evolutions. Fleets have manœuvred on those waters, which, half a century ago, were as near desert as waters well can be, and the day is not distant, when the whole of that vast range of lakes will become the seat of empire, and fraught with all the interests of human society. A passing glimpse, even thou
gh it be in a work of fiction, of what that vast region so lately was, may help to make up the sum of knowledge by which alone, a just appreciation can be formed of the wonderful means by which Providence is clearing the way for the advancement of civilization across the whole American continent.

  DECEMBER, 1839.

  Preface

  * * *

  FOLLOWING THE ORDER of events, this book should be the third in the Series of the Leather-Stocking Tales. In the Deerslayer, Natty Bumppo, under the Sobriquet which forms the title of that work, is represented as a youth, just commencing his forest career as a warrior; having for several years been a hunter so celebrated, as already to have gained the honorable appellation he then bore. In the Last of the Mohicans he appears as Hawkeye, and is present at the death of young Uncas; while in this tale, he re-appears in the same war of ’56, in company with his Mohican friend, still in the vigor of manhood, and young enough to feel that master passion to which all conditions of men, all tempers, and we might almost say all ages, submit, under circumstances that are incited to call it into existence.

  The Pathfinder did not originally appear for several years after the publication of the Prairie, the work in which the leading character of both had closed his career by death. It was, perhaps, a too hazardous experiment to recall to life, in this manner, and after so long an interval, a character that was somewhat a favorite with the reading world, and which had been regularly consigned to his grave, like any living man. It is probably owing to this severe ordeal that the work, like its successor, the Deerslayer, has been so little noticed; scarce one in ten of those who know all about the three earliest books of the series having even a knowledge of the existence of the last at all. That this caprice in taste and favor is in no way dependent on merit, the writer feels certain; for, though the world will ever maintain that an author is always the worst judge of his own productions, one who has written much, and regards all his literary progeny with more or less of a paternal eye, must have a reasonably accurate knowledge of what he has been about the greater part of his life. Such a man may form too high an estimate of his relative merits, as relates to others; but it is not easy to see why he should fall into this error, more than another, as relates to himself. His general standard may be raised too high by means of self-love; but, unless he be disposed to maintain the equal perfection of what he has done, as probably no man was ever yet fool enough to do, he may very well have shrewd conjectures as to the comparative merits and defects of his own productions.

  This work, on its appearance, was rudely and maliciously assailed by certain individuals out of pure personal malignancy. It is scarcely worth the author’s while, nor would it have any interest for the reader, to expose the motives and frauds of these individuals, who have pretty effectually vindicated the writer by their own subsequent conduct. But even the falsest of men pay so much homage to truth, as to strive to seem its votaries. In attacking the Pathfinder, the persons alluded to pointed out faults, that the author, for the first time, has now ascertained to be real; and much to his surprise, as of most of them he is entirely innocent. They are purely errors of the press, unless, indeed, the writer can justly be accused of having been a careless proof reader. A single instance of the mistakes he means may be given in explanation of the manner in which the book was originally got up.

  The heroine of this tale was at first called “Agnes.” In the fifth or sixth chapter this name was changed to “Mabel,” and the manuscript was altered accordingly. Owing to inadvertency, however, the original appellation stood in several places, and the principal female character of the book, until now, has had the advantage of going by two names! Many other typographical errors exist in the earlier editions, most of which, it is believed, are corrected in this.

  There are a few discrepancies in the facts of this work, as connected with the facts of the different books of the series. They are not material, and it was thought fairer to let them stand as proof of the manner in which the books were originally written, than to make any changes in the text.

  In youth, when belonging to the navy, the writer of this book served for some time on the great Western lakes. He was, indeed, one of those who first carried the cockade of the republic, on those inland seas. This was pretty early in the present century, when the navigation was still confined to the employment of a few ships and schooners. Since that day, light may be said to have broken into the wilderness, and the rays of the sun have penetrated to tens of thousands of beautiful valleys and plains, that then lay in “grateful shade.” Towns have been built along the whole of the extended line of coasts, and the traveller now stops at many a place of ten or fifteen, and at one of even fifty, thousand inhabitants, where a few huts then marked the natural sites of future marts. In a word, though the scenes of this book are believed to have once been as nearly accurate as is required by the laws which govern fiction, they are so no longer. Oswego is a large and thriving town; Toronto and Kingston, on the other side of the lake, compete with it; while Buffalo, Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukie, and Chicago, on the upper lakes, to say nothing of a hundred places of lesser note, are fast advancing to the level of commercial places of great local importance. In these changes, the energy of youth and abundance is quite as much apparent as anything else; and it is ardently to be hoped that the fruits of the gifts of a most bountiful Providence may not be mistaken for any peculiar qualities in those who have been their beneficiaries. A just appreciation of the first of these facts will render us grateful and meek; while the vainglorious, who are so apt to ascribe all to themselves, will be certain to live long enough to ascertain the magnitude of their error. That great results are intended to be produced by means of these wonderful changes, we firmly believe; but that they will prove to be the precise results now so generally anticipated, in consulting the experience of the past, and taking the nature of man into the account, the reflecting and intelligent may be permitted to doubt.

  It may strike the novice as an anachronism, to place vessels on Ontario in the middle of the eighteenth century; but, in this particular, facts will fully bear out all the license of the fiction. Although the precise vessels mentioned in these pages may never have existed on that water, or anywhere else, others so nearly resembling them as to form a sufficient authority for their introduction into a work of fiction, are known to have navigated that inland sea, even at a period much earlier than the one just mentioned. It is a fact not generally remembered, however well known it may be, that there are isolated spots, along the line of the great lakes, that date, as settlements, as far back as many of the oldest American towns, and which were the seats of a species of civilization, long before the greater portion of even the original states was rescued from the wilderness.

  Ontario, in our own times, has been the scene of important naval evolutions. Fleets have manœuvred on those waters, which, half a century since, were desert wastes; and the day is not distant, when the whole of that vast range of lakes will become the seat of empire, and fraught with all the interests of human society. A passing glimpse, even though it be in a work of fiction, of what that vast region so lately was, may help to make up the sum of knowledge by which alone a just appreciation can be formed of the wonderful means by which Providence is clearing the way for the advancement of civilization across the whole American continent.

  Chapter I

  “The turf shall be my fragrant shrine;

  My temple, Lord! that arch of thine;

  My censer’s breath the mountain airs,

  And silent thoughts my only prayers.”

  —Moore, “The Turf Shall Be My Fragrant Shrine,” ll. 1–4.

  * * *

  THE SUBLIMITY connected with vastness, is familiar to every eye. The most abstruse, the most far-reaching, perhaps the most chastened of the poet’s thoughts, crowd on the imagination as he gazes into the depths of the illimitable void; the expanse of the ocean is seldom seen by the novice, with indifference, and the mind, even in the obscurity of night, fi
nds a parallel to that grandeur, which seems inseparable from images that the senses cannot compass. With feelings akin to this admiration and awe, the offspring of sublimity, were the different characters with which the action of this tale must open, gazing on the scene before them. Four persons in all, two of each sex, they had managed to ascend a pile of trees, that had been uptorn by a tempest, to catch a view of the objects that surrounded them. It is still the practice of the country to call these spots wind-rows. By letting in the light of heaven upon the dark and damp recesses of the woods, they form a sort of oases in the solemn obscurity of the virgin forests of America. The particular wind-row of which we are writing lay on the brow of a gentle acclivity, and it had opened the way for an extended view, to those who might occupy its upper margins, a rare occurrence to the traveller in the woods. As usual, the spot was small, but owing to the circumstance of its lying on the low acclivity mentioned, and that of the opening’s extending downward, it offered more than common advantages to the eye. Philosophy has not yet determined the nature of the power that so often lays desolate spots of this description, some ascribing it to the whirlwinds that produce water-spouts on the ocean, while others again impute it to sudden and violent passages of streams of the electric fluid; but the effects in the woods are familiar to all. On the upper margin of the opening, to which there is allusion, the viewless influence had piled tree on tree, in such a manner as had not only enabled the two males of the party to ascend to an elevation of some thirty feet above the level of the earth, but, with a little care and encouragement, to induce their more timid companions to accompany them. The vast trunks, that had been broken and riven by the force of the gust, lay blended like jack-straws, while their branches, still exhaling the fragrance of wilted leaves, were interlaced in a manner to afford sufficient support to the hands. One tree had been completely uprooted, and its lower end, filled with earth, had been cast uppermost, in a way to supply a sort of staging for the four adventurers, when they had gained the desired distance from the ground.