" If we assume that John Smith's story of Pocahontas is not
fiction, then to Brown belongs the honor of first recognizing in the Indian
a valuable literary asset from the Gothic romancer's point of view. In
Chapter XVI., he reverses Captain Smith's story and has Edgar Huntly rescue
a young girl from torture and kill an Indian. In the next two chapters, the
hero kills four Indians. The English recognized this introduction of a new
element of strangeness added to terror and gave Brown the credit of
developing an "Americanized" Gothic. He disclosed to future writers of
fiction, like James Fenimore Cooper (p. 125), a new mine of American
materials. This romance has a second distinguishing characteristic, for
Brown surpassed contemporary British novelists in taking his readers into
the open air, which forms the stage setting for the adventures of _Edgar
Huntly_. The hero of that story loves to observe the birds, the squirrels,
and the old Indian woman "plucking the weeds from among her corn, bruising
the grain between two stones, and setting her snares for rabbits and
opossums." He takes us where we can feel the exhilaration from "a wild
heath, whistled over by October blasts meagerly adorned with the dry stalks
of scented shrubs and the bald heads of the sapless mullein.
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