"The Deerslayer"

oil by Takeyce Walter

Chapter 16 was an exciting one, filled with the adventures of the rescue of Chingachcook's betrothed from the camp of the Hurons. I especially enjoyed this description of Deerslayer's love of the forest, which again portrays him as a sensitive and spiritually minded person: 

    "We have written much, but in vain, concerning this extraordinary being, if the reader requires now to be told, that, untutored as he was in the learning of the world, and simple as he ever showed himself to be in all matters touching the subtleties of conventional taste, he was a man of strong, native, poetical feeling. He loved the woods for their freshness, their sublime solitudes, their vastness, and the impress that they everywhere bore of the divine hand of their creator. He seldom moved through them, without pausing to dwell on some peculiar beauty that gave him pleasure, though seldom attempting to investigate the causes; and never did a day pass without his communing in spirit, and this, too, without the aid of forms or language, with the infinite source of all he saw, felt, and beheld."