Cooper’s principal subject was American naval history.  Though
     he made many enemies and lived in turmoil, the novelist had a
     strain of nobility in his character that is reflected
     throughout his formal but manly narratives.  Love interest
     rarely rises in his stories beyond a mechanical
     sentimentality; it is the descriptions of adventure that
     attract.  Nowhere are Fenimore Cooper’s vivid powers of
     description more apparent than in “The Last of the Mohicans,”
     the second in order of the Leatherstocking tales.  In the first
     of the series, “The Pioneers,” the Leatherstocking is
     represented as already past the prime of life, and is
     gradually being driven out of his beloved forests by the axe
     and the smoke of the white settler.  “The Last of the Mohicans”
     takes the reader back before this period, to a time when the
     red man was in his vigour, and was a power to be reckoned with
     in the east of America.  The third of the famous tales is “The
     Prairie,” in which Cooper’s picturesque hero is laid in his
     grave.  Despite this, the author resuscitates him in the two
     remaining volumes—­“The Pathfinder” and “The Deerslayer.”  Of
     these five novels, and, as a matter of fact, of all Cooper’s
     works, “The Last of the Mohicans” is regarded as the
     masterpiece.  In it are to be found all the author’s virtues,
     and few of his faults.  It is certainly the most popular,
     having been translated into several languages.  It was first
     published in 1826.  Cooper died at Cooperstown, the family
     locality, on September 14. 1851.

I.—­Betrayed by the Redskin

It was the third year of the war between France and England in North America.  At Fort Edward, where General Webb lay with five thousand men, the startling news had just been received that the French general, Montcalm, was moving up the Champlain Lake with an army “numerous as the leaves on the trees,” with the forest fastness of Fort William Henry as his object.

Fort William Henry was held by the veteran Scotchman, Munro, at the head of a regiment of regulars and a few provincials.  As this force was utterly inadequate to stem Montcalm’s advance, General Webb at once sent fifteen hundred men to strengthen the position.  While the camp was in a state of bustle consequent on the departure of this relieving force, Captain Duncan Hayward detached himself from the throng, and conducting two ladies, the daughters of Munro, Alice and Cora, to their horses, mounted another steed himself.  It was his welcome duty to see that the ladies reached Fort William Henry in safety.  In order that they might make the journey the more expeditiously, they had obtained the services of a famous Indian runner, known by the name of Le Renard Subtil, whose native appellation was Magua.