Eastern District of Pennsylvania, to wit:

BE IT REMEMBERED, that on the tenth day of January, in the fiftieth year of the Independence of the United States of America, A. D. 1826, H. C. CAREY and J. LEA, of the said district, have deposited in this office the title of a book, the right whereof they claim as proprietors, in the words and figures following, to wit:

"THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS; a Narrative of 1757. By the Author of The Pioneers. Mislike me not for my complexion,

The shadowed livery of the burnished sun.'”

In conformity to the Act of Congress of the United States, entitled, "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by securing the Copies of Maps, Charts, and Books to the Authors and Proprietors of such Copies, during the time therein mentioned ;" and also to an Act, entitled, “An Act supplementary to an Act, entitled, An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by securing the Copies of Maps, Charts, and Books to the Authors and Proprietors of such Copies, during the times therein mentioned, and extending the benefits thereof to the Arts of Designing, Engraving, and Etching Historical and other Prints."

D. CALDWELL,

Clerk of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

PREFACE.

n s

THE reader, who takes up these volumes, in expectation of finding an imaginary and romantic picture of things which never had an existence, will probably lay them aside, disappointed. The work is exactly what it professes to be in its title-page-a narrative. As it relates, however, to matters which may not be universally understood, especially by the more imaginative sex, some of whom, under the impression that it is a fiction, may be induced to read the book, it becomes the interest of the author to explain a few of the obscurities of the historical allusions. He is admonished to discharge this duty, by the bitter cup of experience, which has often proved to him, that however ignorant the public may be of any thing before it is presented to their eyes, the instant it has been subjected to that terrible ordeal, they, individually and collectively, and he may add, intuitively, know more of it than the agent of the discovery; and yet, that, in direct opposition to this incontro vertible fact, it is a very unsafe experiment either for a writer or a projector to trust to the inventive powers of any one but himself. Therefore, nothing which can well be explained, should be left a myste ry. Such an expedient would only impart a peculiar pleasure to readers of that description, who find a strange gratification in spending more of their time in