When Natty Bumppo, the Pathfinder, stood on the edge of the frontier and looked west, he saw the rewards of discovery but also the hardship and misadventure which would await him as he crossed over. He would disengage himself from the persuasions of a mannered existence and be educated by territorial struggles and learn the true composition of a moral environment. Away from the ruin of civilized desire the Pathfinder determines what an uncorrupted man can achieve without the influence of vice. He surrenders his marriage to Mabel, the Sarjeant's daughter, and the comforts of domestic life for the noble idea of the wilderness as religious asylum. He was The Pathfinder as one selected to lead those who were establishing themselves on the continent. Such tenacity was unmatched in the public sphere, but he was also a Pathfinder in a private and more humble sense. The transformation of a civilized man into a man of natural prowess is suitable and proper for one who has navigated uncharted territory and entered into reverenced awareness and who welcomes the solitude of his own conversion.
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