The Pathfinder

The Pathfinder

The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Pathfinder, by James Fenimore
Cooper (#2 in our series by James Fenimore Cooper)
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg file.
Please do not remove this header information.
This header should be the first thing seen when anyone starts to view
the eBook. Do not change or edit it without written permission. The
words are carefully chosen to provide users with the information
needed to understand what they may and may not do with the eBook.
To encourage this, we have moved most of the information to the end,
rather than having it all here at the beginning.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get eBooks, and further
information, is included below. We need your donations.
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541
Find out about how to make a donation at the bottom of this file.
Title: The Pathfinder

Author: James Fenimore Cooper
Release Date: Sep, 1999 [Etext #1880] [Yes, we are more than one year
ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on February 25, 2002]
[Most recently updated: August 22, 2003]
Edition: 11
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Pathfinder, by James Fenimore
Cooper ******This file should be named pthfn11.txt or
pthfn11.zip******
Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, pthfn12.txt
VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, pthfn11a.txt
Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US unless
a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not keep eBooks in
compliance with any particular paper edition.
The "legal small print" and other information about this book may now
be found at the end of this file. Please read this important information,
as it gives you specific rights and tells you about restrictions in how the
file may be used.
***

This etext was prepared by Nigel Lacey, Leicestershire, UK.

The Pathfinder or The Inland Sea
By James Fenimore Cooper

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 introduce 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 the
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 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 older American towns, and which were the seats of
a species of civilization long before the greater