Professor Lounsbury's summary of Cooper's "Naval History" is: "It is safe to say, that for the period which it covers it is little likely to be superseded as the standard history of the American navy. Later investigation may show some of the author's assertions to be erroneous. Some of his conclusions may turn out as mistaken as have his prophecies about the use of steam in war vessels. But such defects, assuming that they exist, are more than counterbalanced by advantages which make it a final authority on points that can never again be so fully considered. Many sources of information which were then accessible no longer exist. The men who shared in the scenes described, and who communicated
information directly to Cooper, have all passed away. These are losses that can never be replaced, even were it reasonable to expect that the same practical knowledge, the same judicial spirit and the same power of graphic description could be found united again in the same person." Most amusing was Cooper's own story of a disputing man who being told: "Why, that is as plain as two and two make four," replied: "But I dispute that too, for two and two make twenty-two."
Cooper called the Mediterranean, its shores and countries, "a sort of a world apart, that is replete with charms which not only fascinate the beholder, but linger in the memories of the absent like visions of a glorious past." And so his cruise in 1830, in the Bella Genovese, entered into the pages of "Wing-and-Wing." The idea was to bring together sailors of all nations—English, French, Italian, and Yankee—on the Mediterranean and aboard a French water-craft of peculiar Italian rig—the lateen sail. These sails spread like the great white wings of birds, and the craft glides among the islands and hovers about every gulf and bay and rocky coast of that beautiful sea. Under her dashing young French captain, Raoul Yvard, Le Fen
Follet (Jack-o'-Lantern or fire-fly, as you will) glides like a water-sprite here, there, and everywhere, guided by Cooper's sea phrases,—for which he had an unfailing instinct,—that meant something "even to the land-lubber who does not know the lingo." It is said many down-east fishermen never tire of Cooper, but despise many of his followers because of their misuse of sea terms. But more of "Wing-and-Wing": there was lovely Ghita, so sweet and brave, and anxious for her daring young lover Raoul, and stricken by the tragedies that befell her in the wake of Lord Nelson's fleet. The brown mountains of Porta Farrajo, "a small, crowded town with little forts and a wall," Cooper had seen.
He had tested its best inn, The Four Nations, by a good dinner in its dining-room of seven mirrors and a broken tile floor, and had some talk with its host as to their late ruler,—he said Napoleon came that evening, sent at once for Elba's oldest flag, which was run up on the forts as a sign of independence.