wolf, and the panther are nearly strangers to them. Even the innocent
deer is rarely seen bounding beneath their arches; for the rifle and
the activity of the settlers hare driven them to other haunts. To
this change (which in some particulars is melancholy to one who knew
the country in its infancy), it may be added that the Otsego is
beginning to be a niggard of its treasures.

The author has elsewhere said that the character of Leather-Stocking
is a creation, rendered probable by such auxiliaries as were necessary
to produce that effect. Had he drawn still more upon fancy, the
lovers of fiction would not have so much cause for their objections to
his work. Still, the picture would not have been in the least true
without some substitutes for most of the other personages. The great
proprietor resident on his lands, and giving his name to instead of
receiving it from his estates as in Europe, is common over the whole
of New York. The physician with his theory, rather obtained from than
corrected by experiments on the human constitution; the pious, self-
denying, laborious, and ill-paid missionary; the half-educated,
litigious, envious, and disreputable lawyer, with his counterpoise, a
brother of the profession, of better origin and of better character;
the shiftless, bargaining, discontented seller of his “betterments;”
the plausible carpenter, and most of the others, are more familiar to
all who have ever dwelt in a new country.

It may be well to say here, a little more explicitly, that there was
no real intention to describe with particular accuracy any real
characters in this book. It has been often said, and in published
statements, that the heroine of this book was drawn after the sister
of the writer, who was killed by a fall from a horse now near half a
century since. So ingenious is conjecture that a personal resemblance