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PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

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The Pathfinder

J >> James Fenimore Cooper >> The Pathfinder



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 tbe details are altogether of recent in-
vention. 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 cir-
cumstances 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 in-
terest 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 peculiatrities that are indispensable to identity, withont
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 li-
cense of the fiction. Although the precise vessels men-
tioned 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 wil-
derness.

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 pass-
ing 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 Provi-
dence is clearing the way for the advancement of civiliza-
tion across the whole American continent.



THE PATHFINDER.

CHAPTER I.

The turf shall be my fragrant shrine;
My temple, Lord ! that arch of thine;
My censer's breath the mountain airs,
And silent thoughts my only prayers.
MOORE


The sublimity connected with vastness is familiar to
every eye. The most abstruse, the most far-reaching,
perhaps the most chastened of the poet's thoughts, crowd
on the imagination as he gazes into the depths of the
illimitable void. The expanse of the ocean is seldom seen
by the novice with indifference; and the mind, even in
the obscurity of night, finds a parallel to that grandeur,
which seems inseparable from images that the senses can-
not compass. With feelings akin to this admiration and
awe -- the offspring of sublimity -- were the different char-
acters with which the action of this tale must open, gazing
on the scene before them. Four persons in all, -- two of
each sex, -- they had managed to ascend a pile of trees, that
had been uptorn by a tempest, to catch a view of the objects
that surrounded them. It is still the practice of the coun-
try to call these spots wind-rows. By letting in the light
of heaven upon the dark and damp recesses of the wood,
they form a sort of oases in the solemn obscurity of the
virgin forests of America. The particular wind-row of
which we are writing lay on the brow of a gentle accliv-
ity; and, though small, it had opened the way for an ex-
tensive view to those who might occupy its upper margin,
a rare occurrence to the traveller in the woods. Philosophy
has not yet determined the nature of the power that so
often lays desolate spots of this description; some ascrib-
ing it to the whirlwinds which produce waterspouts on the
ocean, while others again impute it to sudden and violent
passages of streams of the electric fluid; but the effects in
the woods are familiar to all. On the upper margin of the
opening, the viewless influence had piled tree on tree, in
such a manner as had not only enabled the two males of
the party to ascend to an elevation of some thirty feet
above the level of the earth, but, with a little care and
encouragement, to induce their more timid companions to
accompany them. The vast trunks which had been broken
and driven by the force of the gust lay blended like jack-
straws; while their branches, still exhaling the fragrance
of withering leaves, were interlaced in a manner to afford
sufficient support to the hands. One tree had been com-
pletely uprooted, and its lower end, filled with earth, had
been cast uppermost, in a way to supply a sort of staging
for the four adventurers, when they had gained the de-
sired distance from the ground.

The reader is to anticipate none of the appliances of
people of condition in the description of the personal ap-
pearances of the group in question. They were all way-
farers in the wilderness; and had they not been, neither
their previous habits, nor their actual social positions,
would have accustomed them to many of the luxuries of
rank. Two of the party, indeed, a male and female, be-
longed to the native owners of the soil, being Indians of
the well-known tribe of the Tuscaroras; while their com-
panions were -- a man, who bore about him the peculiarities
of one who had passed his days on the ocean, and was, too,
in a station little, if any, above that of a common mariner;
and his female associate, who was a maiden of a class in
no great degree superior to his own; though her youth,
sweetness and countenance, and a modest, but spirited mien,
lent that character of intellect and refinement which adds
so much to the charm of beauty in the sex. On the present
occasion, her full blue eye reflected the feeling of sublimity
that the scene excited, and her pleasant face was beaming
with the pensive expression with which all deep emotions,
even though they bring the most grateful pleasure, shadow
the countenances of the ingenuous and thoughful.

And truly the scene was of a nature deeply to impress the
imagination of the beholder. Towards the west, in which
direction the faces of the party were turned, the eye ranged
over an ocean of leaves, glorious and rich in the varied
and lively verdure of a generous vegetation, and shaded
by the luxuriant tints which belong to the forty-second
degree of latitude. The elm wifh its graceful and weep-
ing top, the rich varieties of the maple, most of the noble
oaks of the American forest, with the broad-leaved linden
known in the parlance of the conutry as the basswood,
mingled their uppermost branches, forming one broad and
seemingly interminable carpet of foliage which stretched
away towards the setting sun, until it bounded the hori-
zon, by blending with the clouds, as the waves and the sky
meet at the base of the vault of heaven. Here and there,
by some accident of the tempests, or by a caprice of nature,
a trifling opening among these giant members of the forest
permitted an inferior tree to struggle upward toward the
light, and to lift its modest head nearly to a level with
the surrounding surface of verdure. Of this class were the
birch, a tree of some account in regions less favored, the
quivering aspen, various generous nut-woods, and divers
others which resembled the ignoble and vulgar, thrown by
circumstances into the presence of the stately and great.
Here and there, too, the tall straight trunk of the pine
pierced the vast field, rising high above it, like some grand
monument reared by art on a plain of leaves.

It was the vastness of the view, the nearly unbroken
surface of verdure, that contained the principle of grandeur.
The beauty was to be traced in the delicate tints, relieved
by graduations of light and shade; while the solemn repose
induced the feeling allied to awe.

"Uncle," said the wondering, but pleased girl, address-
ing her male companion, whose arm she rather touched
than leaned on, to steady her own light but firm footing,
"this is like a view of the ocean you so much love!"

"So much for ignorance, and a girl's fancy, Magnet," -
a term of affection the sailor often used in allusion to his
niece's personal attractions; "no one but a child would
think of likening this handful of leaves to a look at the
real Atlantic. You might seize all these tree-tops to
Neptune's jacket, and they would make no more than a
nosegay for his bosom."

"More fanciful than true, I think, uncle. Look thither;
it must be miles on miles, and yet we see nothing but
leaves! what could one behold, if looking at the
ocean?"

"More!" returned the uncle, giving an impatient
gesture with the elbow the other touched, for his arms
were crossed, and the hands were thrust into the bosom of
a vest of red cloth, a fashion of the times, -- "more, Mag-
net! say, rather, what less? Where are your combing seas,
your blue water, your rollers, your breakers, your whales,
or your waterspouts, and your endless motion, in this bit
of a forest, child?"

"And where are your tree-tops, your solemn silence,
your fragrant leaves, and your beautiful green, uncle, on
the ocean?"

"Tut, Magnet! if your understood the thing, you would
know that green water is a sailor's bane. He scarcely
relishes a greenhorn less."

"But green trees are a different thing. Hist! that
sound is the air breathing among the leaves!"

"You should hear a nor-wester breathe, girl, if you
fancy wind aloft. Now, where are your gales, and hurri-
canes, and trades, and levanters, and such like incidents,
in this bit of a forest? and what fishes have you swim-
ming beneath yonder tame surface?"

"That there have been tempests here, these signs around
us plainly show; and beasts, if not fishes, are beneath those
leaves."

"I do not know that," returned the uncle, with a sailor's
dogmatism. "They told us many stories at Albany of the
wild animals we should fall in with, and yet we have seen
nothing to frighten a seal. I doubt if any of your inland
animals will compare with a low latitude shark."

"See!" exclaimed the niece, who was more occupied
with the sublimity and beauty of the "boundless wood"
than with her uncle's arguments; "yonder is a smoke
curling over the tops of the trees -- can it come from a
house?"

"Ay, ay; there is a look of humanity in that smoke,"
returned the old seaman, "which is worth a thousand trees.
I must show it to Arrowhead, who may be running past
a port without knowing it. It is probable there is a
caboose where there is a smoke."

As he concluded, the uncle drew a hand from his bosom,
touched the male Indian, who was standing near him,
lightly on the shoulder, and pointed out at thin line of
vapor which was stealing slowly out of the wilderness of
leaves, at a distance of about a mile, and was diffusing
itself in almost imperceptible threads of humidity in the
quivering atmosphere. The Tuscarora was one of those
noble-looking warriors oftener met with among the abo-
rigines of this continent a century since than to-day; and,
while he had mingled sufficiently with the colonists to be
familiar with their habits and even with their language,
he had lost little, if any, of the wild grandeur and simple
dignity of a chief. Between him and the old seaman the
intercourse had been friendly, but distant; for the Indian
had been too much accustomed to mingle with the officers
of the different military posts he had frequented not to
understand that his present companion was only a subor-
dinate. So imposing, indeed, had been the quiet superior-
ity of the Tuscarora's reserve, that Charles Cap, for so was
the seaman named, in his most dogmatical or facetious
moments, had not ventured on familiarity in an inter-
course which had now lasted more than a week. The sight
of the curling smoke, however, had struck the latter like
the sudden appearance of a sail at sea; and, for the first
time since they met, he ventured to touch the warrior, as
has been related.

The quick eye of the Tuscarora instantly caught a sight
of the smoke; and for full a minute he stood, slightly
raised on tiptoe, with distended nostrils, like the buck that
scents a taint in the air, and a gaze as riveted as that of
the trained pointer while he waits his master's aim. Then,
falling back on his feet, a low exclamation, in the soft
tones that form so singular a contrast to its harsher cries
in the Indian warrior's voice, was barely audible; other-
wise, he was undisturbed. His countenance was calm, and
his quick, dark, eagle eye moved over the leafy panorama,
as if to take in at a glance every circumstance that might
enlighten his mind. That the long journey they had at-
tempted to make through a broad belt of wilderness was
necessarily attended with danger, both uncle and niece
well knew; though neither could at once determine
whether the sign that others were in their vicinity was the
harbinger of good or evil.

"There must be Oneidas or Tuscaroras near us, Arrow-
head," said Cap, addressing his Indian companion by his
conventional English name; "will it not be well to join
company with them, and get a comfortable berth for the
night in their wigwam?"

"No wigwam there," Arrowhead answered in his un-
moved manner -- "too much tree."

"But Indians must be there; perhaps some old mess-
mates of your own, Master Arrowhead."

"No Tuscarora -- no Oneida -- no Mohawk -- pale-face
fire."

"The devil it is? Well, Magnet, this surpasses a seaman's
philosophy: we old sea-dogs can tell a lubber's nest from
a mate's hammock; but I do not think the oldest admiral
in his Majesty's fleet can tell a king's smoke from a
collier's."

The idea that human beings were in their vicinity, in
that ocean of wilderness, had deepened the flush on the
blooming cheek and brightened the eye of the fair crea-
ture at his side; but she soon turned with a look of sur-
prise to her relative, and said hesitatingly, for both had
often admired the Tuscarora's knowledge, or, we might
almost say, instinct, --

"A pale-face's fire! Surely, uncle, he cannot know _that_?"

"Ten days since, child, I would have sworn to it; but
now I hardly know what to believe. May I take the lib-
erty of asking, Arrowhead, why you fancy that smoke,
now, a pale-face's smoke, and not a red-skin's?"

"Wet wood," returned the warrior, with the calmness
with which the pedagogue might point out an arithmetical
demonstration to his puzzled pupil. "Much wet -- much
smoke; much water -- black smoke."

"But, begging your pardon, Master Arrowhead, the
smoke is not black, nor is there much of it. To my eye,
now, it is as light and fanciful a smoke as ever rose from
a captain's tea-kettle, when nothing was left to make the
fire but a few chips from the dunnage."

"Too much water," returned Arrowhead, with a slight
nod of the head; "Tuscarora too cunning to make fire
with water! pale-face too much book, and burn anything;
much book, little know."

"Well, that's reasonable, I allow," said Cap, who was no
devotee of learning: "he means that as a hit at your read-
ing, Magnet; for the chief has sensible notions of things
in his own way. How far, now, Arrowhead, do you make
us, by your calculation, from the bit of a pond that you
call the Great Lake, and towards which we have been so
many days shaping our course?"

The Tuscarora looked at the seaman with quiet superi-
ority as he answered, "Ontario, like heaven; one sun, and
the great traveller will know it."

"Well, I have been a great traveller, I cannot deny;
but of all my v'y'ges this has been the longest, the least
profitable, and the farthest inland. If this body of fresh
water is so nigh, Arrowhead, and so large, one might think
a pair of good eyes would find it out; for apparently every-
thing within thirty miles is to be seen from this look-
out."

"Look," said Arrowhead, stretching an arm before him
with quiet grace; "Ontario!"

"Uncle, you are accustomed to cry 'Land ho!' but not
'Water ho!' and you do not see it," cried the niece, laugh-
ing, as girls will laugh at their own idle conceits.

"How now, Magnet! dost suppose that I shouldn't know
my native element if it were in sight?"

"But Ontario is not your native element, dear uncle;
for you come from the salt water, while this is fresh."

"That might make some difference to your young mar-
iner, but none to the old one. I should know water, child,
were I to see it in China."

"Ontario," repeated Arrowhead, with emphasis, again
stretching his hand towards the north-west.

Cap looked at the Tuscarora, for the first time since
their acquaintance, with something like an air of contempt,
though he did not fail to follow the direction of the chief's
eye and arm, both of which were directed towards a vacant
point in the heavens, a short distance above the plain of
leaves.

"Ay, ay; this is much as I expected, when I left the
coast in search of a fresh-water pond," resumed Cap,
shrugging his shoulders like one whose mind was made up,
and who thought no more need be said. "Ontario may be
there, or, for that matter, it may be in my pocket. Well,
I suppose there will be room enough, when we reach it,
to work our canoe. But Arrowhead, if there be pale-faces
in our neighborhood, I confess I should like to get within
hail of them."

The Tuscarora now gave a quiet inclination of his head,
and the whole party descended from the roots of the up-
torn tree in silence. When they reached the ground,
Arrowhead intimated his intention to go towards the fire,
and ascertain who had lighted it; while he advised his
wife and the two others to return to a canoe, which they
had left in the adjacent stream, and await his return.

"Why, chief, this might do on soundings, and in an
offing where one knew the channel," returned old Cap;
"but in an unknown region like this I think it unsafe to
trust the pilot alone too far from the ship: so, with your
leave, we will not part company."

"What my brother want?" asked the Indian gravely,
though without taking offence at a distrust that was suffi-
ciently plain.

"Your company, Master Arrowhead, and no more. I will
go with you and speak these strangers."

The Tuscarora assented without difficulty, and again
he directed his patient and submissive little wife, who
seldom turned her full rich black eye on him but to ex-
press equally her respect, her dread, and her love, to pro-
ceed to the boat. But here Magnet raised a difficulty.
Although spirited, and of unusual energy under circum-
stances of trial, she was but woman; and the idea of being
entirely deserted by her two male protectors, in the midst
of a wilderness that her senses had just told her was seem-
ingly illimitable, became so keenly painful, that she ex-
pressed a wish to accompany her uncle.

"The exercise will be a relief, dear sir, after sitting so
long in the canoe," she added, as the rich blood slowly re-
turned to a cheek that had paled in spite of her efforts to
be calm; "and there may be females with the strangers."

"Come, then, child; it is but a cable's length, and we
shall return an hour before the sun sets."

With this permission, the girl, whose real name was
Mabel Dunham, prepared to be of the party; while the
Dew-of-June, as the wife of Arrowhead was called, pas-
sively went her way towards thie canoe, too much accus-
tomed to obedience, solitude, and the gloom of the forest
to feel apprehension.

The three who remained in the wind-row now picked
their way around its tangled maze, and gained the margin
of the woods. A few glances of the eye sufficed for Arrow-
head; but old Cap deliberately set the smoke by a pocket-
compass, before he trusted himself within the shadows of
the trees.

"This steering by the nose, Magnet, may do well enough
for an Indian, but your thoroughbred knows the virtue of
the needle," said the uncle, as he trudged at the heels of
the light-stepping Tuscarora. "America would never have
been discovered, take my word for it, if Columbus had
been nothing but nostrils. Friend Arrowhead, didst ever
see a machine like this?"

The Indian turned, cast at glance at the compass, which
Cap held in a way to direct his course, and gravely an-
swered, "A pale-face eye. The Tuscarora see in his head.
The Salt-water (for so the Indian styled his companion)
all eye now; no tongue."

"He means, uncle, that we had needs be silent, perhaps
he distrusts the persons we are about to meet."

"Ay, 'tis an Indian's fashion of going to quarters. You
perceive he has examined the priming of his rifle, and it
may be as well if I look to that of my own pistols."

Without betraying alarm at these preparations, to which
she had become accustomed by her long journey in the
wilderness, Mabel followed with a step as elastic as that of
the Indian, keeping close in the rear of her companions.
For the first half mile no other caution beyond a rigid
silence was observed; but as the party drew nearer to the
spot where the fire was known to be, much greater care
became necessary.

The forest, as usual, had little to intercept the view
below the branches but the tall straight trunks of trees.
Everything belonging to vegetation had struggled towards
the light, and beneath the leafy canopy one walked, as it
might be, through a vast natural vault, upheld by myriads
of rustic columns. These columns or trees, however, often
served to conceal the adventurer, the hunter, or the foe;
and, as Arrowhead swiftly approached the spot where his
practised and unerrimig senses told him the strangers ought
to be, his footstep gradually became lighter, his eye more
vigilant, and his person was more carefully concealed.

"See, Saltwater," said he exulting, pointing through
the vista of trees; "pale-face fire!"

"By the Lord, the fellow is right!" muttered Cap;
"there they are, sure enough, and eating their grub as
quietly as if they were in the cabin of a three-decker."

"Arrowhead is but half right!" whispered Mabel, "for
there are two Indians and only one white man."

"Pale-faces," said the Tuscarora, holding up two fingers;
"red man," holding up one.

"Well," rejoined Cap, "it is hard to say which is right
and which is wrong. One is entirely white, and a fine
comely lad he is, with an air of respectability about him;
one is a red-skin as plain as paint and nature can make
him; but the third chap is half-rigged, being neither brig
nor schooner."

"Pale-faces," repeated Arrowhead, again raising two
fingers, "red man," showing but one.

"He must be right, uncle; for his eye seems never to
fail. But it is now urgent to know whether we meet as
friends or foes. They may be French."

"One hail will soon satisfy us on that head," returned
Cap. "Stand you behind the tree, Magnet, lest the knaves
take it into their heads to fire a broadside without a parley,
and I will soon learn what colors they sail under."

The uncle had placed his two hands to his mouth to
form a trumpet, and was about to give the promised hail,
when a rapid movement from the hand of Arrowhead de-
feated the intention by deranging the instrument.

"Red man, Mohican," said the Tuscarora; "good; pale-
faces, Yengeese."

"These are heavenly tidings," murmured Mabel, who
little relished the prospect of a deadly fray in that remote
wilderness. "Let us approach at once, dear uncle, and
proclaim ourselves friends."

"Good," said the Tuscarora "red man cool, and know;
pale-face hurried, and fire. Let the squaw go."

"What!" said Cap in astonishment; "send little Mag-
net ahead as a lookout, while two lubbers, like you and
me, lie-to to see what sort of a land-fall she will make!
If I do, I -- "

"It is wisest, uncle," interrupted the generous girl,
"and I have no fear. No Christian, seeing a woman ap-
proach alone, would fire upon her; and my presence will
be a pledge of peace. Let me go forward, as Arrowhead
wishes, and all will be well. We are, as yet, unseen, and
the surprise of the strangers will not partake of alarm."

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