The Pathfinder, or The Inland Sea

The Pathfinder, or The Inland Sea is a historical novel by American author James Fenimore Cooper, first published in 1840.

It is the fourth novel Cooper wrote featuring Natty Bumppo, his fictitious frontier hero, and the third chronological episode of the Leatherstocking Tales.

The adventures of the plot on the water take authority from the fact that Cooper had as midshipman actually seen service on Lake Ontario.

Natty, in this novel commonly called the Pathfinder, keeps in a hardy middle age his simple and honest nature, which is severely tested by his love for a nineteen-year-old young woman, Mabel Dunham.

With the same touch of realism which had kept Uncas and Cora apart in The Last of the Mohicans, Cooper separates these lovers, and sends Natty's romantic interest to the arms of a younger suitor, restoring the hero to his home in the wilderness.