Samples
of
James Fenimore Coopers Work
“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
practised 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 neighbouring province of New-York, forming a natural passage across half
the distance that the French were compelled to master in order to strike their
enemies. Near its southern termination, it received the contributions of
another lake, whose waters were so limpid, as to have been exclusively selected
by the Jesuit missionaries, to perform the typical purification of baptism, and
to obtain for it the title of the lake “du Saint Sacrement.” The less zealous
English thought they conferred a sufficient honour on its unsullied fountains,
when they bestowed the name of their reigning prince, the second of the House
of Hanover. The two united to rob the untutored possessors of its wooded
scenery of their native right to perpetuate its original appellation of “Horican.”
(The Last of the Mohicans)
“"Where
are the blossoms of those summers!--fallen, one by one; so all of my family
departed, each in his turn, to the land of spirits. I am on the hilltop and
must go down into the valley; and when Uncas follows in my footsteps there will
no longer be any of the blood of the Sagamores, for my boy is the last of the
Mohicans." Chingachgook to Hawkeye, Ch. 3”
The
Pioneers: The Sources of the Susquehanna, A Descriptive Tale (1823),
The Last of the Mohicans:
A Narrative of 1757
(1826),
The Prairie: A Tale (1827),
The Pathfinder: The Inland Sea (1840), and
The Deerslayer: The
First War Path
(1841)
By:
Alina Gonzalez
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