 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 I

 »Mine ear is open, and my heart prepared;
 The worst is worldly loss thou canst unfold: -
 Say, is my kingdom lost?«
                                                       Richard II, III.ii.93-95.
 
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
