free boyhood the young Cooper came to love the wilderness and to know
the characters of border life. When the village school was no longer
adequate, he went to study privately in Albany and later entered Yale
College. But he was not interested in the study of books. When, as a
junior, he was expelled from college, he turned to a career in the navy.
Accordingly in the fall of 1806 he sailed on a merchant ship, the
_Sterling_, and for the next eleven months saw hard service before the
mast. Soon after this apprenticeship he received a commission as a
midshipman in the United States navy. Although it was a time of peace,
and he saw no actual fighting, he gained considerable knowledge from his
service on Lake Ontario and Lake Champlain that he put to good use
later. Shortly before his resignation in May, 1811, he had married, and
for several years thereafter he lived along in a pleasant, leisurely
fashion, part of the time in Cooperstown and part of the time in
Westchester County, until almost accidentally he broke into the writing
of his first novel. Aside from the publication of his books, Cooper's
later life was essentially uneventful. He died at Cooperstown, on
September 14, 1851.

The connection of Cooper's best writing with the life he knew at first
hand is thus perfectly plain. In his novels dealing with the wilderness,
popularly known as the Leatherstocking Tales, he drew directly on his
knowledge of the backwoods and backwoodsmen as he gained it about
Cooperstown. In _The Pioneers_ (1823) he dealt with the scenes of his
boyhood, scenes which lay very close to his heart; and in the other
volumes of this series, _The Last of the Mohicans_ (1826), _The Prairie_
(1827), _The Pathfinder_ (1840), and _The Deerslayer (1841), he
continued to write of the trappers and frontiersmen and outpost
garrisons and Indians who made up the forest life he knew so well.
Similarly, in the sea tales, which began with 'The Pilot'(1823) and