James Fenimore Cooper · 1840 · river

James Fenimore Cooper's 1840 Leatherstocking novel. Natty Bumppo, now called Pathfinder, guides a sergeant's daughter down the rivers to the British post at Oswego and out onto Lake Ontario, in a frontier war of ambushes among the Thousand Islands. He also, uncharacteristically and disastrously, falls in love.

1. 1
   The Mohawk Valley

   Mabel Dunham is escorted west from the Mohawk country toward the lake garrison where her father is posted, guided by Pathfinder and Chingachgook, with a great deal of unhelpful advice from her uncle the sailor.

2. 2
   Oswego

   The party comes down the river to the British fort at Oswego, on the shore of the inland sea, where the war with the French is fought in raids and ambushes and every friendly face in the garrison might be reporting to the enemy.

3. 3
   Lake Ontario

   Out on Lake Ontario in the cutter Scud, the sailor and the scout argue continually about whose kind of navigation is the real thing - fresh water against salt, compass against the shape of the shoreline.

4. 4
   The Thousand Islands

   Among the Thousand Islands the outpost is betrayed and besieged, and Pathfinder holds it with almost nobody - and afterwards gives up his claim on Mabel to the younger man, which is the truest thing in the book.