long before the greater portion of even the original states was
rescued from the wilderness.
    Ontario, in our own times, has been the scene of important naval evolutions.
Fleets have manoeuvred on those waters, which, half a century ago, were as near
desert 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.
 
DECEMBER, 1839.
 

                                    Preface

Following the order of events, this book should be the third in the Series of
the Leather-Stocking Tales. In the Deerslayer, Natty Bumppo, under the Sobriquet
which forms the title of that work, is represented as a youth, just commencing
his forest career as a warrior; having for several years been a hunter so
celebrated, as already to have gained the honorable appellation he then bore. In
the Last of the Mohicans he appears as Hawkeye, and is present at the death of
young Uncas; while in this tale, he re-appears in the same war of '56, in
company with his Mohican friend, still in the vigor of manhood, and young enough
to feel that master passion to which all conditions of men, all tempers, and we
might almost say all ages, submit, under circumstances that are incited to call
it into existence.
    The Pathfinder did not originally appear for several years after the
publication of the Prairie, the work in which the leading character of both had
closed his career by death. It was, perhaps, a too hazardous experiment to
recall to life, in this manner, and after so long an interval, a character that
was somewhat a favorite with the reading world, and which had been regularly
consigned to his grave, like any living man. It is probably owing to this severe
ordeal that the work, like its successor, the Deerslayer, has been so little
noticed; scarce one in ten of those who know all about the three earliest books
of the series having even a knowledge of the existence of the last at all. That
this caprice in taste and favor is in no way dependent on merit, the writer
feels certain; for, though the world will ever maintain that an author is always
the worst