Library / Literature & Fiction
The Pioneers; Or, The Sources of the Susquehanna
- Pages
- about 624
- Category
- Literature & Fiction
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 11 h at 250 wpm
From the opening
As this work professes, in its title-page, to be a descriptive tale,
they who will take the trouble to read it may be glad to know how much
of its contents is literal fact, and how much is intended to represent
a general picture. The author is very sensible that, had he confined
himself to the latter, always the most effective, as it is the most
valuable, mode of conveying knowledge of this nature, he would have made
a far better book. But in commencing to describe scenes, and perhaps he
may add characters, that were so familiar to his own youth, there was
a constant temptation to delineate that which he had known, rather than
that which he might have imagined. This rigid adhesion to truth, an
indispensable requisite in history and travels, destroys the charm of
fiction; for all that is necessary to be conveyed to the mind by
the latter had better be done by delineations of principles, and of
characters in their classes, than by a too fastidious attention to
originals.
New York having but one county of Otsego, and the Susquehanna but one
proper source, there can be no mistake as to the site of the tale. The
history of this district of country, so far as it is connected with
civilized men, is soon told.
Otsego, in common with most of the interior of the province of New
York, was included in the county of Albany previously to the war of the
separation. It then became, in a subsequent division of territory, a
part of Montgomery; and finally, having obtained a sufficient population
of its own, it was set apart as a county by itself shortly after the
peace of 1783. It lies among those low spurs of the Alleghanies which
cover the midland counties of New York, and it is a little east of a
meridional line drawn through the centre of the State.
A short sample. Read the whole book
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