M. H.
LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
The Two Americas: An Account of Sport and Travel, with Notes on Men and Manners, in North and South America. By Major Sir Rose Lambart Price, Bart. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.
It would hardly be inferred from such a title that the duodecimo in large print which assumes to discuss the New World is occupied with the diary of a tour in a gunboat from Rio de Janeiro through Magellan's Straits and up the west coast of South America to San Diego, and thence by stage and railway to San Francisco, Salt Lake and Chicago. An exploration of this character could not be exhaustive, and the successors of the gallant major will find an abundance of matter left in the twin continents for much larger books with much smaller titles.
It must be said, in justice to the writer, that the pretentiousness of his book is only skin-deep. It "thunders in the index," but disappears after the front page. He makes no claim to profundity, and is satisfied to be an authority among Nimrods rather than with statesmen and philosophers. The rod and gun suit his hand better than the pen, and he takes not the least trouble to disguise the fact. Style is the very least of his cares: we should almost judge, indeed, that he likes to parade his contempt for it. The pronoun who he constantly applies to animals, from a sheep to a shellfish. Of the Uruguayan thistles he notes: "The abundance of this weed was quite surprising, and consisted chiefly of two kinds." The gentleman of color he invariably mentions as a nigger—a word as strange to ears polite in America, and perhaps as natural to them in England, as nasty. He plucks at Sir G. Wolseley's laurels won in "licking a few miserable niggers in Ashantee."
But literary vanities can be despised by a man who drops a prong-horned antelope at one thousand and ninety yards; overtakes by swimming, and captures, a turtle in mid-ocean; finishes with a single ball a grizzly who had put to flight the settlers of half a county in Idaho; stalks a guanaco in Patagonia nine feet high to the top of the head; and catches in one day's fishing, "the only day I really worked hard, twenty-seven California salmon, weighing three hundred and twenty-four pounds." The majesty of the facts utterly overshadows any little blemishes in the method of stating them. Truth so grand might well afford to present itself quite naked, as Truth poetically does—much more somewhat defective in the cut of its garments.
Sir Rose Price is a cosmopolitan sportsman, having hunted the jungles of India, the swamps of Eastern Africa and China, the fjelds of Norway, and most other fields of "mimic war." As usual with persons of that taste, he enjoys perfect health, and, like most persons who know that great blessing, he is full of bonhommie and looks on the rosy side of things. Mosquitoes he dislikes: he denounces also the modern Peruvians. But his chief bitterness is reserved for the unhappy gunboat, the Rocket, which took eight months to get him to San Diego, and spent half an hour in turning round. Whether or not that particular segment of England's wooden walls was built in the eclipse, no reader of Sir Rose's book will doubt that she is rigged with curses dark. When he leaves her a cloud seems to be lifted from his soul. Everything thereafter is delightful, if we except the climate of San Francisco, which he abominates as windy and extreme in its daily changes, and the social system which prevails under Brigham Young. The "big trees" transport him; the California stage-drivers are unapproachable in the world; the officers of the United States army treat him with the most assiduous and unvaried courtesy and hospitality; the ladies of both coasts of the United States are unrivaled for beauty; and "the more one sees of America, both of people and country, the better one likes both." He sums up in the following climax: "Should any visit America after reading these lines, let me advise them to pay particular attention to three subjects—i. e., canvas-back ducks, terrapin and madeira. This to the uninitiated is a hint worth remembering." The last word, we take it, refers to the wine of that name, which we had thought was still in process of very slow recovery from the eclipse of twenty-five years ago. The major, however, knows wine, and speaks impartially of it. The wines of California he damns unreservedly: the Californians themselves, he says, never drink them.
Sir Rose Price became intimate with the brave and unfortunate Custer. He was to have joined that officer on the expedition which terminated so fatally. His "traps were packed" and he was ready to start, when, as he states it, a singular train of untoward events interposed and saved his scalp. Secretary Belknap was impeached—General Custer was summoned to Washington and gave testimony unfavorable to the accused. General Grant's alleged disgust thereat caused Custer to be deprived of independent command and the power of appointing a staff. Hence The Two Americas and one scalp less at the belt of Sitting Bull.
Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall): An Autobiographical Fragment and Biographical Notes; with Personal Sketches of Contemporaries, Unpublished Lyrics, and Letters of Literary Friends. Boston: Roberts Brothers.