Perhaps other occasional events are harder to swallow, particularly the one in which Uncas turns aside a small stream and finds there a moccasin print that leads the woodsmen on to Magua. Though Mark Twain was not the first to criticize this occurence, ever since he ridiculed it in the North American Review of July 1895, it has too often been accepted as typical of the book, but such is simply not true. Twain's satire called for exaggeration and was based on the demands of realism rather than romance; the satirist furthermore inaccurately stated that it was Chingachgook who turned aside the stream. This one event is, of course, fantastic and impossible, but it is the most flagrant one in the novel, and there are rather few other, lesser ones. While it would be better omitted, it is not representative of the novel as a whole.
In looking at the plot of The Last of the Mohicans, the reader will do best to appreciate Cooper's genuine art of improvisation and to remember that the plot is one of romantic action, the background of which is the wresting of a continent from nature and the Indians.
