The Last of the Mohicans [antikvár]

1 A RISKY JOURNEY It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of No^th ^ America between the prench and the English that the toils'^ and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered before the adverse hosts could meet. Perhaps no district throughout the wide extent of the intermediate frontiers can furnish a livelier picture of the cruelty and fierceness of the savage warfare of those periods than the country which lies between the head-waters of the Hudson and the adjacent lakes. A wide and apparently an impervious boundary of forests severed the possessions of the hostile provinces of France and England. The hardy colonist and the trained European who fought at his side frequently expended months in struggling against the rapids of the streams or the rugged passes of the mountains in quest of an opportunity to exhibit their courage against their hard-found foes. The facilities which nature had there offered to the march of the combatants were too obvious to be neglected. The lengthened sheet of Lake Champlain stretched from the frontiers of Canada deep within the borders of the neighbouring province of New York, forming a natural passage across half the distance that the French were compelled to master in order to strike their enemies. Near its southern termination it received the contributions of another lake.