Last of The Mohicans, demo reading.
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The last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. Chapter one. The last of the Mohicans quote from Shakespeare. Mine ear is open and my heart prepared. The worst is worldly loss thou canst unfold say is my kingdom Lost end quote. It was a peculiar feature to the colonial wars of North America that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered before the adverse hosts could meet. 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 in affecting the rugged passes of the mountains, in quest of an opportunity to exhibit their courage in a more martial conflict. But emulating the patients and self denial of the practice. Native warriors, they learned to overcome every difficulty. And it would seem that in time there was no recess of the woods so dark nor any secret place so lovely that it might claim exemption from the inroads of those who had pledged their blood to satiate their vengeance or to uphold the cold and selfish policy of the distant monarchs of europe. 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 these periods than the country which lies between the headwaters of the Hudson and the adjacent lakes. The facilities which nature had there offered to the March of the combatants were too obvious to be neglected. The lengthened sheet of the champlain stretched from the frontiers of Canada deep within the borders of the neighboring 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 whose waters were so limpid as to have been exclusively selected by the Jesuit missionaries to perform the typical purification of baptism and to obtain for the title of Lake norman, the less zealous english thought they conferred a sufficient honor on its Unseld fountains when they bestowed the name of their reigning prince, the second of the House of Hanover, The two United to rob the untutored possessors of its woody scenery of their native right to perpetuate its original appellation of hurricane winding its way among countless islands and embedded in mountains. The Holy Lake extended a dozen leagues still further to the south, with the high plane that they're inter posed itself to the further passage of the water commenced a portage of as many miles which conducted the adventurer to the banks of the Hudson. At a point where with the usual obstructions of the rapids or rifts as they were then termed in the language of the country, the river became navigable to the tide, while in the pursuit of their daring plans of annoyance, the restless enterprise of the french even attempted the distant and difficult gorges of the Allegheny. It may easily be imagined that their proverbial acuteness would not overlook the natural advantages of the district we have just described. It became emphatically the bloody arena in which most of the battles for the mastery of the colonies were contested. Forts were erected at the different points that commanded the facilities of the route and were taken and retaken, razed and rebuilt as victory alighted on the hostile banners. While the husband man shrank back from the dangerous passes within the safer boundaries of the more ancient settlements, Armies larger than those that had often disposed of the sectors of the mother countries were seen to bury themselves in these forests, whence they rarely returned, but in skeleton bands that were haggard with care or dejected by defeat. Though the arts of peace were unknown to this fatal region. Its forests were alive with men. It's shades and glenn's rang with the sounds of martial music and the echoes of its mountains through back the laugh or repeated the wanton cry of many a gallant and reckless youth as he hurried by them in the noon tide of his spirits to slumber in a long night of forgetfulness. It was in this scene of strife and bloodshed, that the incidents we shall attempt to relate occurred during the third year of the war which England and France last waged for the possession of a country that neither was destined to retain the imbecility of her military leaders abroad, and the fatal want of energy in her councils at home had lowered the character of great Britain from the proud elevation on which it had been placed by the talents and enterprise of her former warriors and statesmen no longer dreaded by her enemies. Her servants were fast losing the confidence of self respect in this mortifying a basement. The colonists, though innocent of her imbecility and too humble to be the agents of her blunders, were but the natural participate, Urz.