DT731 Entered, according to act of Congress, in the year 1856, by DIX, EDWARDS & Co., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern MILLER & HOLMAN, A LETTER FROM JOHN CHARLES FREMONT. NEW YORK, Nov. 15, 1856. GENTLEMEN:-I willingly comply with your request; for I have no doubt that, in publishing an American edition of Mr. Andersson's valuable work, you will render an acceptable service to the cause of geographical knowledge. I am but too happy to do what I can to extend either the fame or the influence of his labors. It is impossible that the record of his strange and important experiences should not, everywhere, be received with favor. Particularly by Americans, whom a spirit of intelligent and adventurous curiosity has sent abroad over all the earth, will it be read with congenial and appreciative interest. It is needless for me to say that I read such books as this of Mr. Andersson's with a peculiar pleasure, greatly enhanced by old associations. Familiar-although, perhaps, in an inferior degree with similar "wanderings," I find, in the brief record of a night, or the journey of a day, many unwritten thingsmuch that the traveler afterward thought unworthy of mention, but which, at the time, filled his mind and heart. Nights of sleepless anxiety, and days of wearing doubt or despondency, crowd the unwritten page; often a chance word suggests trains of incidents and circumstances, which do not come under the eye of the general reader. But, aside from the attractions of personal sympathy, these books possess a charm for me which, I confess, I do not find in any other department of literature. vi LETTER FROM JOHN CHARLES FREMONT. It hardly occurs to our minds, that the thousands of years which have rolled away, impressed with the infinite activity of the human race, have not sufficed to make known to us our own habitation. We have extended our researches into other worlds, material and spiritual, but have not yet made ourselves acquainted with the earth on which we tread. In these latter days, new and grand pictures have been displayed to our minds, giving a wider field to the imagination. That primeval darkness which hung over the waters of the circumpolar sea, and obscured the interior of Africa, has vanished before the generous courage of Kane, and the brave endurance of Barth and his companions. Many, before them, were called to the noble task; but the glorious fruition of the chosen few was long delayed. We give our heart-felt admiration to the men who have penetrated the night of ages, and, in bringing its secrets to the light, have uncovered the graves of their brave predecessors who perished under the fevered noon of Africa and the frozen night of the Polar Sea. Remote, uncertain, beset with uncommon and undefined dangers, these journeys, like that from whose undiscovered bourne no traveler returns, seemed to fascinate with a mysterious charm. The dangerous path had always its travelers. One by one, they disappeared from the horizon of our knowledge; but unrecorded deaths, and regal prohibitions, the regretful sympathy of nations for brave lives thrown away, all were ineffectual to chill the enthusiasm which urged new followers into their devoted path. "Death's couriers, Fame and Honor, called them to the field again." Those adventurers who had the physical strength and good fortune to go safely through their enterprises, from whatever field they returned, found ever a cordial welcome, and a deep and prevailing interest in the records of their experience. At no period of the world's history has this interest in explorations been more universal and active than at the present time. The recent important geographical discoveries, which may be considered to have very appropriately closed the brilliant era of the last thirty years, have roused public curiosity to an unusual LETTER FROM JOHN CHARLES FREMONT. vii degree. To quote the language of an eloquent writer of our own day, himself a distinguished traveler-Mr. Bayard Taylor: "One by one, the outposts of barbarism are stormed and carried, advanced parallels are thrown up, and the besieging lines of knowledge, which, when once established, can never be retaken, are gradually closing round the yet unconquered mysteries of the globe." Of these many movements of exploration, none, certainly, have evoked a stronger zeal, or given occasion for nobler displays of energy and endurance, or are likely to lead to more signal consequences, than those which have been directed toward the great African continent. That vast, populous, and fertile region, over which the profoundest mystery has brooded from the earliest time, which was known to the ancients only for a short distance along the shores of the Mediterranean and Red seas, and which, up to a recent day, has resisted all the efforts of modern enterprise to penetrate beyond the skirts of its coasts, is now becoming accessible, and, in a few years, will have revealed to us all its secrets and its treasure. The recent premature death, on the field of their labors, of several eminent African discoverers, has awakened public sympathy, and, together with the interesting results of their researches, has turned attention in that direction and induced a general disposition to be better informed in regard to the country. On this account Mr. Andersson's narrative will be particularly acceptable. His labors were directed to the same general object, and belonged to the same epoch as that body of explorers whose efforts have almost succeeded in throwing open the whole interior of Africa. A narrow belt, of ten or fifteen degrees of latitude, is all that separates the fields of the northern and southern explorers-all that shuts out from our scope of view the entire African continent. The darkness, which for so many centuries has been gathered about this division of the globe, is almost dispelled; and it is not an unfounded anticipation which expects to see Africa traversed from Cape Colony to Tripoli within the next ten years. Should this problem be finally solved, and the conjecture of Mr. Andersson, viii LETTER FROM JOHN CHARLES FREMONT. that the immense and rich interior of the country is pierced by a fine navigable water, be realized, we may expect such an advance in the civilization and commerce of Africa as will give to it a real place in the society of nations, and a sense of completeness to our own ideas of the globe. Very respectfully, Gentlemen, Your obedient servant, J. C. FREMONT. MESSES. DIX, EDWARDS & Co. |