A forest is an area with a high density of trees. In the United States, of the one billion acres of original forests that once towered over America, only five percent now remain. The beauty of forest in America continent then invites some immigrants from England to this place. It then gives inspiration to Cooper in writing his literary works. The beauty of forest is beautifully described by Cooper in his novels, The Leatherstocking Tales.

James Fenimore Cooper was America’s first successful popular novelist. His most lasting contributions to American literature were his five books about Hawkeye Bumppo, varying in genre from implausible romantic adventure to realistic narrative. Later anthologized as The Leatherstocking Tales, they are best read in the order written: The Pioneers (1823), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840), and The Deerslayer (1841). In The Last of the Mohicans, Cooper looks back nearly one hundred years to the French and Indian Wars. The Last of The Mohicans is an adventure and romance set in 1757 during the third year of the war raging between England and France in the American colonies (The French and Indian War/Seven Years War). The colonial powers have forged alliances with native peoples in the area surrounding Albany, New York. The Huron have allied themselves with the French, while the Mohicans are fighting for the British. The frontier or the central character of this novel is known as Hawkeye (also known as Nathaniel or Natty Bumppo), adopted son of the Mohican Chingachgook, and adopted brother of his son, Uncas.

The adventure of Hawkeye in this novel describes the full lengthy story of the forest picture. The beauty of the forest pictured by Cooper in this novel can be seen from the quotation below :

“Though the arts of peace were unknown to this fatal region, its forests were alive with men; its shades and glens rang with the sounds of martial music, and the echoes of its mountains threw back the laugh, or repeated the wanton cry, of many a gallant and reckless youth, as he hurried by them, in the noontide of his spirits, to slumber in a long night of forgetfulness”

“The alarmed colonists believed that the yells of the savages mingled with every fitful gust of wind that issued from the interminable forests of the west..”

“The vast canopy of woods spread itself to the margin of the river, overhanging the water, and shadowing its dark current with a deeper hue. The rays of the sun were beginning to grow less fierce, and the intense heat of the day was lessened, as the cooler vapors of the springs and fountains rose above their leafy beds, and rested in the atmosphere. Still that breathing silence, which marks the drowsy sultriness of an American landscape in July, pervaded the secluded spot, interrupted only by the low voices of the men, the occasional and lazy tap of a woodpecker, the discordant cry of some gaudy jay, or a swelling on the ear, from the dull roar of a distant waterfall..”

Cooper carefully pays attention to the beauty of forest. Through his words in his novel, it can be easily found that Cooper wants the reader to focus to the beauty of forest with its wilderness.