The Pathfinder: Or The Inland Sea (the Writings Of James Fenimore Cooper)

Continues the adventures of Natty Bumppo, the woodsman and champion of the Indians. This is the fourth book of "Leather-stocking Tales" by J.Femimore Cooper, author of "The Deerslayer", "Last of the Mohicans", "The Pioneers" and "The Prairie". With the publication of The Pathfinder in 1840, James Fenimore Cooper engaged in what he called the “hazardous experiment” of reviving one of his most popular characters who had been allowed to die in a previous novel.Natty Bumppo—who had appeared as Leatherstocking in The Pioneers, as Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans, and who had died as the Trapper in The Prairie—appears again as the hero of The Pathfinder. Encouraged by his British publisher to write another tale of the American frontier, Cooper revived his character to take him to the shores of Lake Ontario, the Inland Sea, for an adventurous story of sailors, Indians, and hunters. Inspired by his own experiences as a mid-shipman on Lake Ontario in 1808-09, Cooper writes in his most picturesque fashion of the wilderness of the Great Lakes, the Thousand Islands, and Niagara.“Never did the art of writing tread more closely upon the art of the painter,” wrote Honoré de Balzac in his review of The Pathfinder. Cooper writes of places that were wilderness in his youth and that changed rapidly in his own lifetime as cities and commerce developed around the Great Lakes. Cooper's attitude toward this development was ambivalent, as he indicated in his Preface: “That great results are intended to be produced by means of these wonderful changes, we firmly believe...but that they will prove to be of the precise results now so generally anticipated, in consulting the experience of the past, and taking the nature of man into account, the reflecting and intelligent may be permitted to doubt.”The Pathfinder remains a classic and entertaining account of the American wilderness and of aspects of human experience in the New World. Vigorous, self-reliant, amazingly resourceful, and moral, Natty Bumppo is the prototype of the Western hero. A faultless arbiter of wilderness justice, he hates middle-class hypocrisy. But he finds his love divided between the woman he has pledged to protect on a treacherous journey and the untouched forest that sustains him in his beliefs. A fast-paced narrative full of adventure and majestic descriptions of early frontier life, Indian raiders, and defenseless outposts, The Pathfinder set the standard for epic action literature. The Pathfinder (1840), Cooper's most picturesque novel and the fourth of the five Leatherstocking Tales, is a naval story set on the Great Lakes of the 1750s. Fashioned from Cooper's own experience as a midshipman on Lake Ontario in 1808-09, the novel revives Natty Bumpo (who had died in The Prairie), and illuminates Cooper's interest in American history with his concern for social development

here Is The Gripping Original Western That Set The Standard For The Genre. Natty Bumppo Is The Quintessential Western Hero, A Faultless Arbiter Of Wilderness Justice. But He Finds His Love Divided Between The Woman He Has Pledged To Protect-and The Untouched Forest.