# The Pathfinder/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 portion of even the older States was rescued
* from the wilderness.
* Ontario in our own times has been the scene of important naval
* evolutions. Fleets have manoeuvered on those waters, which, half
* a century ago, were as deserted 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 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.
* James Fenimore Cooper,
* The Pathfinder,
* Pref.,
* Ch.1,
* Ch.2,
* Ch.3,
* Ch.4,
* Ch.5,
* Ch.6,
* Ch.7,
* Ch.8,
* Ch.9,
* Ch.10,
* Ch.11,
* Ch.12,
* Ch.13,
* Ch.14,
* Ch.15,
* Ch.16,
* Ch.17,
* Ch.18,
* Ch.19,
* Ch.20,
* Ch.21,
* Ch.22,
* Ch.23,
* Ch.24,
* Ch.25,
* Ch.26,
* Ch.27,
* Ch.28,
* Ch.29,
* Ch.30