{This text has been transcribed and annotated by Hugh C. MacDougall,Founder and Secretary of the James Fenimore Cooper Society(jfcooper@wpe.com), who welcomes corrections and emendations. The texthas been transcribed as written, except that because of the limitationsof the Gutenberg Project format, italicized words have been transcribedin FULL CAPITALS.}
{"The Lake Gun" is one of James Fenimore Cooper's very few shortstories, and was written in the last year of his life. It wascommissioned by George E. Wood for publication in a volume ofmiscellaneous stories and poems called "The Parthenon" (New York:George E. Wood, 1850), and Cooper received $100 for it. The story wasreprinted a few years later in a similar volume called "Specimens ofAmerican Literature" (New York, 1866). It was published in book form in1932 in a slipcased edition limited to 450 copies (New York: WilliamFarquhar Payson, 1932) with an introduction by Robert F. Spiller.}
{Introductory Note: The "Lake Gun," though based on folklore aboutSeneca Lake in Central New York State (the "Wandering Jew" and the"Lake Gun"), and on a supposed Seneca Indian legend, is in factpolitical satire commenting on American political demagogues ingeneral, and in particular on the then (1850) Whig Senator from NewYork State, William Henry Seward (1801-1872), who had served asGovernor of New York (1838-1842) and would later become Secretary ofState (1861-1869) under Presidents Lincoln and Johnson. By 1850 Cooperfeared that unscrupulous political extremists, mobilizing publicopinion behind causes such as abolitionism, were leading Americatowards a disastrous Civil War. Cooper probably obtained his local loreabout Seneca Lake while visiting his son Paul, who attended GenevaCollege (now Hobart College) on Lake Seneca from 1840-1844.}
The Seneca is remarkable for its "Wandering Jew," and the "Lake Gun."The first is a tree so balanced that when its roots are clear of thebottom it floats with its broken and pointed trunk a few feet above thesurface of the water, driving before the winds, or following in thecourse of the currents. At times, the "Wandering Jew" is seen offJefferson, near the head of this beautiful sheet; and next it willappear anchored, as it might be, in the shallow water near the outlet.
{"Wandering Jew" = The medieval legend of Ahasueras, who mocked Christon his way to the cross and was condemned to live until Judgment Day,is widespread throughout Europe, though he was only identified as a"Jew" in the 17th century--students at Geneva College (now HobartCollege) applied the name to a supposedly unsinkable floating log inLake Seneca, identified as the legendary "Chief Agayentha";Jefferson = I am indebted to John Gormley of Burdett, NY, for theinformation that the Village of Jefferson, which I had been unableto locate, was renamed "Watkins" in 1852 and then the current andwell-known "Watkins Glen" in 1926. (August, 2011)}
For more than half a century has this remnant of the forest floatedabout, from point to point, its bald head whitening with time, untilits features have become familiar to all the older inhabitants of thatregion of country. The great