The Last of the Mohicans | Page 5

first occupied by the
Europeans in this portion of the continent. They were, consequently,
the first dispossessed; and the seemingly inevitable fate of all these
people, who disappear before the advances, or it might be termed the
inroads, of civilization, as the verdure of their native forests falls before
the nipping frosts, is represented as having already befallen them.
There is sufficient historical truth in the picture to justify the use that
has been made of it.
In point of fact, the country which is the scene of the following tale has
undergone as little change, since the historical events alluded to had
place, as almost any other district of equal extent within the whole
limits of the United States. There are fashionable and well-attended
watering-places at and near the spring where Hawkeye halted to drink,
and roads traverse the forests where he and his friends were compelled

to journey without even a path. Glen's has a large village; and while
William Henry, and even a fortress of later date, are only to be traced
as ruins, there is another village on the shores of the Horican. But,
beyond this, the enterprise and energy of a people who have done so
much in other places have done little here. The whole of that wilderness,
in which the latter incidents of the legend occurred, is nearly a
wilderness still, though the red man has entirely deserted this part of
the state. Of all the tribes named in these pages, there exist only a few
half-civilized beings of the Oneidas, on the reservations of their people
in New York. The rest have disappeared, either from the regions in
which their fathers dwelt, or altogether from the earth.
There is one point on which we would wish to say a word before
closing this preface. Hawkeye calls the Lac du Saint Sacrement, the
"Horican." As we believe this to be an appropriation of the name that
has its origin with ourselves, the time has arrived, perhaps, when the
fact should be frankly admitted. While writing this book, fully a quarter
of a century since, it occurred to us that the French name of this lake
was too complicated, the American too commonplace, and the Indian
too unpronounceable, for either to be used familiarly in a work of
fiction. Looking over an ancient map, it was ascertained that a tribe of
Indians, called "Les Horicans" by the French, existed in the
neighborhood of this beautiful sheet of water. As every word uttered by
Natty Bumppo was not to be received as rigid truth, we took the liberty
of putting the "Horican" into his mouth, as the substitute for "Lake
George." The name has appeared to find favor, and all things
considered, it may possibly be quite as well to let it stand, instead of
going back to the House of Hanover for the appellation of our finest
sheet of water. We relieve our conscience by the confession, at all
events leaving it to exercise its authority as it may see fit.

CHAPTER 1
"Mine ear is open, and my heart prepared: The worst is wordly loss
thou canst unfold:--Say, is my kingdom lost?" --Shakespeare

It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the
toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered before the
adverse hosts could meet. A wide and apparently an impervious
boundary of forests severed the possessions of the hostile provinces of
France and England. The hardy colonist, and the trained European who
fought at his side, frequently expended months in struggling against the
rapids of the streams, or in effecting the rugged passes of the mountains,
in quest of an opportunity to exhibit their courage in a more martial
conflict. But, emulating the patience and self-denial of the practiced
native warriors, they learned to overcome every difficulty; and it would
seem that, in time, there was no recess of the woods so dark, nor any
secret place so lovely, that it might claim exemption from the inroads
of those who had pledged their blood to satiate their vengeance, or to
uphold the cold and selfish policy of the distant monarchs of Europe.
Perhaps no district throughout the wide extent of the intermediate
frontiers can furnish a livelier picture of the cruelty and fierceness of
the savage warfare of those periods than the country which lies between
the head waters of the Hudson and the adjacent lakes.
The facilities which nature had there offered to the march of the
combatants were too obvious to be neglected. The lengthened sheet of
the Champlain stretched from the frontiers of Canada, deep within the
borders of the neighboring province of New York, forming a natural
passage across half the distance that the French were compelled to
master in order