The Pathfinder

James Fenimore Cooper
The Pathfinder

The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Pathfinder, by James Fenimore
Cooper (#2 in our series by James Fenimore Cooper)
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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
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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
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