THE DEERSLAYER James Fenimore Cooper Author
- nouveau livreISBN: 2940012281388
Chapter I. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore. There is society where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: … Plus…
Chapter I. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore. There is society where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the universe, and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal Childe Harold.On the human imagination events produce the effects of time. Thus, hewho has travelled far and seen much is apt to fancy that he has livedlong; and the history that most abounds in important incidents soonestassumes the aspect of antiquity. In no other way can we account for thevenerable air that is already gathering around American annals. When themind reverts to the earliest days of colonial history, the period seemsremote and obscure, the thousand changes that thicken along the linksof recollections, throwing back the origin of the nation to a day sodistant as seemingly to reach the mists of time; and yet four lives ofordinary duration would suffice to transmit, from mouth to mouth, in theform of tradition, all that civilized man has achieved within thelimits of the republic. Although New York alone possesses a populationmaterially exceeding that of either of the four smallest kingdoms ofEurope, or materially exceeding that of the entire Swiss Confederation,it is little more than two centuries since the Dutch commenced theirsettlement, rescuing the region from the savage state. Thus, what seemsvenerable by an accumulation of changes is reduced to familiarity whenwe come seriously to consider it solely in connection with time.This glance into the perspective of the past will prepare the reader tolook at the pictures we are about to sketch, with less surprise than hemight otherwise feel; and a few additional explanations may carry himback in imagination to the precise condition of society that we desireto delineate. It is matter of history that the settlements on theeastern shores of the Hudson, such as Claverack, Kinderhook, and evenPoughkeepsie, were not regarded as safe from Indian incursions a centurysince; and there is still standing on the banks of the same river, andwithin musket-shot of the wharves of Albany, a residence of a youngerbranch of the Van Rensselaers, that has loopholes constructed fordefence against the same crafty enemy, although it dates from a periodscarcely so distant. Other similar memorials of the infancy of thecountry are to be found, scattered through what is now deemed the verycentre of American civilization, affording the plainest proofs that allwe possess of security from invasion and hostile violence is the growthof but little more than the time that is frequently fulfilled by asingle human life.The incidents of this tale occurred between the years 1740 and 1745,when the settled portions of the colony of New York were confined tothe four Atlantic counties, a narrow belt of country on each side of theHudson, extending from its mouth to the falls near its head, and toa few advanced neighborhoods on the Mohawk and the Schoharie. Broadbelts of the virgin wilderness not only reached the shores of the firstriver, but they even crossed it, stretching away into New England, andaffording forest covers to the noiseless moccasin of the native warrior,as he trod the secret and bloody war-path. A bird's-eye view of thewhole region east of the Mississippi must then have offered onevast expanse of woods, relieved by a comparatively narrow fringe ofcultivation along the sea, dotted by the glittering surfaces of lakes,and intersected by the waving lines of river. In such a vast picture ofsolemn solitude, the district of country we design to paint sinks intoinsignificance, though we feel encouraged to proceed by the convictionthat, with slight and immaterial distinctions, he who succeeds in givingan accurate idea of any portion of this wild region must necessarilyconvey a tolerably correct notion of the whole.Whatever may be the changes produced by man, the eternal round of theseasons is unbroken. Summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, return intheir stated order with a sublime precision, affording to man one of thenoblest of all the occasions he enjoys of proving the high powers ofhis far-reaching mind, in compassing the laws that control their exactuniformity, and in calculating their never-ending revolutions. Digital Content>E-books>World History>World Hist>World History, SAP Digital >16<
