to have noticed that when a cannon-ball strikes the ground it either
buries itself or skips a hundred feet or so; skips again a hundred feet
or so--and so on, till finally it gets tired and rolls. Now in one place
he loses some "females"--as he always calls women--in the edge of a wood
near a plain at night in a fog, on purpose to give Bumppo a chance to
show off the delicate art of the forest before the reader. These mislaid
people are hunting for a fort. They hear a cannonblast, and a
cannon-ball presently comes rolling into the wood and stops at their
feet. To the females this suggests nothing. The case is very different
with the admirable Bumppo. I wish I may never know peace again if he
doesn't strike out promptly and follow the track of that cannon-ball
across the plain through the dense fog and find the fort. Isn't it a
daisy? If Cooper had any real knowledge of Nature's ways of doing
things, he had a most delicate art in concealing the fact. For
instance: one of his acute Indian experts, Chingachgook (pronounced
Chicago, I think), has lost the trail of a person he is tracking through
the forest. Apparently that trail is hopelessly lost. Neither you nor
I could ever have guessed out the way to find it. It was very different
with Chicago. Chicago was not stumped for long. He turned a running
stream out of its course, and there, in the slush in its old bed, were
that person's moccasin-tracks. The current did not wash them away, as it
would have done in all other like cases--no, even the eternal laws of
Nature have to vacate when Cooper wants to put up a delicate job of
woodcraft on the reader.

We must be a little wary when Brander Matthews tells us that Cooper's
books "reveal an extraordinary fulness of invention." As a rule, I am
quite willing to accept Brander Matthews's literary judgments and applaud
his lucid and graceful phrasing of them; but that particular statement
needs to be taken with a few tons of salt. Bless your heart, Cooper