Voyage of the Paper Canoe: A Geographical Journey of two thousand five hundred miles, from Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico, during the years 1874-5. By Nathaniel H. Bishop, Author of “One Thousand Miles’ Walk across South America,” and corresponding Member of the Boston Society of Natural History, and of the New York Academy of Sciences. Boston: Lee & Shepard; New York: Charles T. Dillingham. 1878.
Mr. Bishop has given us a most interesting and instructive book. It cannot fail to be interesting to every one who has any love for nature, or any appreciation of out-of-door life and adventure; and it is instructive in two ways: first, by showing what can be done by a paper boat (a thing which most people know little or nothing about) under skilful management, and, secondly, by the information it gives regarding that remarkable inland line of navigation which runs along almost our whole Atlantic coast, the very existence of which is perhaps known to comparatively few persons.
Mr. Bishop started from Quebec on July 4, 1874, in a large wooden canoe, with which he had at first proposed to make his journey, under the impression, in which well-informed seamen shared, that two hundred miles of his route would be on the open ocean. With this boat he ascended the St. Lawrence and Richelieu rivers to Lake Champlain, thence proceeding by the Champlain and Erie canals to Albany. At this point he concluded to adopt a lighter craft, which was made for him at Troy by Mr. Waters. This was the paper canoe with which the rest of the voyage was made; it was only one-eighth of an inch in thickness, and weighed only fifty-eight pounds. In this seemingly frail but really very strong boat he rowed along down the Hudson, through the Kill von Kull, up the Raritan, through the canal to the Delaware, down the Delaware to the bay and Cape Henlopen, thence along the coast nearly to Cape Charles. Here he had to take the steamer across Chesapeake Bay; but thence, with the exception of short land-portages, the voyage was pursued through the sounds and inlets skirting the coast, and the Waccamaw River, to the Florida line at St. Mary’s, and across Florida by the St. Mary’s and Suwanee Rivers to the Gulf of Mexico.
We have given a short sketch of what Mr. Bishop did; but how he did it, and the various incidents and adventures of his trip, must be learned from the book itself, which we commend heartily to the perusal of all who like to read a most interesting story, which has the advantage of being true from beginning to end.
Seven Years and Mair. By Anna T. Sadlier. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1878.
This is a pleasing and graceful little tale quite out of the common track. It opens amid the wild scenery and the wild people of the Shetlands, passes thence to France, and goes back to a happy ending in its Shetland home. The out-of-the-way scenery and characters afford unusual scope for a picturesque imagination, which Miss Sadlier seems to possess in a very high degree, but which she holds under, a wise restraint and never allows to run away with her. She delights in the long, low sunsets, the gloom of night, the roar of the tempest, the swell of the sea, the grey and the rosy dawn of morning, the solemn beauty of the starry night. All these have a meaning, a poetry, almost a life for her; and she is very happy in her descriptions of them. These are enhanced by a sweet, clear English, which she has doubtless caught from a mother whose name is and will long remain a household word among Catholic readers. The narrative is fresh and pure and simply quaint. Miss Sadlier does not affect to depict the psychological monstrosities which are the ambition of most of the story-writers of the day. She avoids microscopic inspections of the interiors, so to say, of impossible personages, and gives us instead a pleasing story of the romantic style, with a few characters strongly marked and well contrasted, the whole forming a refreshing change from the average fiction of the day.
The Christian Reformed in Mind and Manners. By Benedict Rogacci, S.J. The translation edited by Henry James Coleridge, S.J. London: Burns & Oates. 1877. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society Co.)
This volume is the twenty-third of the quarterly series brought out by the Jesuits in London. The original is a work of the seventeenth century. “It may be considered,” says the editor, “as the fruit of the great experience of Father Rogacci in giving retreats,” and “is one of those series of meditations in which the whole substance and system of the Exercises of St. Ignatius are worked up, although not precisely in the form in which they lie in the Exercises themselves.” Moreover, “the meditations are meant for persons of all classes, not only for religious persons; and those who are familiar from practice with the text of the book itself of St. Ignatius will not fail to see how perfect an acquaintance with and mastery of it must have been possessed by Father Rogacci.”
The meditations are arranged for an eight days’ retreat, at the rate of four a day. But since this may be considered excessive, a “selection” is given on page xii. “for persons who desire to make only three a day.” Indeed, Father Rogacci’s own practice was “not to give more than three meditations a day, with a repetition, or some practical considerations helping to the reformation of life, in the afternoon.” “The place of these considerations,” continues the editor, “is supplied in the present work by a number of practical reflections which he calls réforme, one of which he would have the exercitant read each day at the time of the consideration. There are sixteen of these considerations, in order that the exercitant may choose for himself, or as directed by his spiritual guide, whose assistance is supposed in works like this, according to his special needs.”
Our own judgment of the work is that it is most excellent as a whole, and we recommend it specially to those who are called upon from time to time to give retreats, whether to religious or to sodalities. We regret, however, that the meditations on hell, which are assigned to the fifth day, have been left without annotations for those who may use the book in private. “Pious” exaggerations and figures of speech which may be necessary, by way of economy, to impress gross and sensual natures are very much out of place, we think, in a work of the kind before us.