



Produced by Stephen Kerr and Martin Robb





THE DEERSLAYER

By James Fenimore Cooper




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, he
who has travelled far and seen much is apt to fancy that he has lived
long; and the history that most abounds in important incidents soonest
assumes the aspect of antiquity. In no other way can we account for the
venerable air that is already gathering around American annals. When the
mind reverts to the earliest days of colonial history, the period seems
remote and obscure, the thousand changes that thicken along the links
of recollections, throwing back the origin of the nation to a day so
distant as seemingly to reach the mists of time; and yet four lives of
ordinary duration would suffice to transmit, from mouth to mouth, in the
form of tradition, all that civilized man has achieved within the
limits of the republic. Although New York alone possesses a population
materially exceeding that of either of the four smallest kingdoms of
Europe, or materially exceeding that of the entire Swiss Confederation,
it is little more than two centuries since the Dutch commenced their
settlement, rescuing the region from the savage state. Thus, what seems
venerable by an accumulation of changes is reduced to familiarity when
we come seriously to consider it solely in connection with time.

This glance into the perspective of the past will prepare the reader to
look at the pictures we are about to sketch, with less surprise than he
might otherwise feel; and a few additional explanations may carry him
back in imagination to the precise condition of society that we desire
to delineate. It is matter of history that the settlements on the
eastern shores of the Hudson, such as Claverack, Kinderhook, and even
Poughkeepsie, were not regarded as safe from Indian incursions a century
since; and there is still standing on the banks of the same river, and
within musket-shot of the wharves of Albany, a residence of a younger
branch of the Van Rensselaers, that has loopholes constructed for
defence against the same crafty enemy, although it dates from a period
scarcely so distant. Other similar memorials of the infancy of the
country are to be found, scattered through what is now deemed the very
centre of American civilization, affording the plainest proofs that all
we possess of security from invasion and hostile violence is the growth
of but little more than the time that is frequently fulfilled by a
single 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 to
the four Atlantic counties, a narrow belt of country on each side of the
Hudson, extending from its mouth to the falls near its head, and to
a few advanced "neighborhoods" on the Mohawk and the Schoharie. Broad
belts of the virgin wilderness not only reached the shores of the first
river, but they even crossed it, stretching away into New England, and
affording 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 the
whole region east of the Mississippi must then have offered one
vast expanse of woods, relieved by a comparatively narrow fringe of
cultivation along the sea, dotted by the glittering surfaces of lakes,
and intersected by the waving lines of river. In such a vast picture of
solemn solitude, the district of country we design to paint sinks into
insignificance, though we feel encouraged to proceed by the conviction
that, with slight and immaterial distinctions, he who succeeds in giving
an accurate idea of any portion of this wild region must necessarily
convey a tolerably correct notion of the whole.

Whatever may be the changes produced by man, the eternal round of the
seasons is unbroken. Summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, return in
their stated order with a sublime precision, affording to man one of the
noblest of all the occasions he enjoys of proving the high powers of
his far-reaching mind, in compassing the laws that control their exact
uniformity, and in calculating their never-ending revolutions.

Centuries of summer suns had warmed the tops of the same noble oaks and
pines, sending their heats even to the tenacious roots, when voices were
heard calling to each other, in the depths of a forest, of which the
leafy surface lay bathed in the brilliant light of a cloudless day
in June, while the trunks of the trees rose in gloomy grandeur in the
shades beneath. The calls were in different tones, evidently proceeding
from two men who had lost their way, and were searching in different
directions for their path. At length a shout proclaimed success, and
presently a man of gigantic mould broke out of the tangled labyrinth
of a small swamp, emerging into an opening that appeared to have been
formed partly by the ravages of the wind, and partly by those of fire.
This little area, which afforded a good view of the sky, although it was
pretty well filled with dead trees, lay on the side of one of the high
hills, or low mountains, into which nearly the whole surface of the
adjacent country was broken.

"Here is room to breathe in!" exclaimed the liberated forester, as soon
as he found himself under a clear sky, shaking his huge frame like a
mastiff that has just escaped from a snowbank. "Hurrah! Deerslayer; here
is daylight, at last, and yonder is the lake."

These words were scarcely uttered when the second forester dashed
aside the bushes of the swamp, and appeared in the area. After making
a hurried adjustment of his arms and disordered dress, he joined his
companion, who had already begun his disposition for a halt.

"Do you know this spot!" demanded the one called Deerslayer, "or do you
shout at the sight of the sun?"

"Both, lad, both; I know the spot, and am not sorry to see so useful
a fri'nd as the sun. Now we have got the p'ints of the compass in our
minds once more, and 't will be our own faults if we let anything turn
them topsy-turvy ag'in, as has just happened. My name is not Hurry
Harry, if this be not the very spot where the land-hunters camped the
last summer, and passed a week. See I yonder are the dead bushes of
their bower, and here is the spring. Much as I like the sun, boy, I've
no occasion for it to tell me it is noon; this stomach of mine is as
good a time-piece as is to be found in the colony, and it already p'ints
to half-past twelve. So open the wallet, and let us wind up for another
six hours' run."

At this suggestion, both set themselves about making the preparations
necessary for their usual frugal but hearty meal. We will profit by this
pause in the discourse to give the reader some idea of the appearance of
the men, each of whom is destined to enact no insignificant part in our
legend.

It would not have been easy to find a more noble specimen of vigorous
manhood than was offered in the person of him who called himself Hurry
Harry. His real name was Henry March but the frontiersmen having caught
the practice of giving sobriquets from the Indians, the appellation of
Hurry was far oftener applied to him than his proper designation, and
not unfrequently he was termed Hurry Skurry, a nickname he had obtained
from a dashing, reckless offhand manner, and a physical restlessness
that kept him so constantly on the move, as to cause him to be known
along the whole line of scattered habitations that lay between the
province and the Canadas. The stature of Hurry Harry exceeded six feet
four, and being unusually well proportioned, his strength fully realized
the idea created by his gigantic frame. The face did no discredit to the
rest of the man, for it was both good-humored and handsome. His air was
free, and though his manner necessarily partook of the rudeness of a
border life, the grandeur that pervaded so noble a physique prevented it
from becoming altogether vulgar.

Deerslayer, as Hurry called his companion, was a very different person
in appearance, as well as in character. In stature he stood about
six feet in his moccasins, but his frame was comparatively light and
slender, showing muscles, however, that promised unusual agility, if not
unusual strength. His face would have had little to recommend it except
youth, were it not for an expression that seldom failed to win upon
those who had leisure to examine it, and to yield to the feeling of
confidence it created. This expression was simply that of guileless
truth, sustained by an earnestness of purpose, and a sincerity of
feeling, that rendered it remarkable. At times this air of integrity
seemed to be so simple as to awaken the suspicion of a want of the
usual means to discriminate between artifice and truth; but few came in
serious contact with the man, without losing this distrust in respect
for his opinions and motives.

Both these frontiersmen were still young, Hurry having reached the
age of six or eight and twenty, while Deerslayer was several years his
junior. Their attire needs no particular description, though it may
be well to add that it was composed in no small degree of dressed
deer-skins, and had the usual signs of belonging to those who pass their
time between the skirts of civilized society and the boundless forests.
There was, notwithstanding, some attention to smartness and the
picturesque in