[Rarebooks] FA: 1863 American Northwest Travels & Panama

[Joslin Hall Rare Books, ABAA]

offered on a major internet auction this week, an 1863 travelogue amongst 
the northwestern US woods and streams, & Panama.

Offered without reserve, because every time you use a reserve a baby rabbit 
cries.

<http://tinyurl.com/nlnlx>

"THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE, ADVENTURES AMONG THE NORTHWESTERN RIVERS AND 
FORESTS AND ISTHMIANA"

     By Theodore Winthrop. Published by Ticknor and Fields in 1863.

"The Canoe and the Saddle, Adventures Among the Northwestern Rivers and 
Forests" is the author's recounting of a trip made in 1853 to the 
territories of Washington and Oregon, including the Tacoma area, Puget 
Sound, the Atinam River, the Columbia River, and the Cascades. He spent 
much of his time traveling among the Native Americans of the region, whom 
he describes in great detail, including passages in the Chinook language 
written phonetically, as conversation. Also included is a four page 
"partial vocabulary of the Chinook Jargon" prefaced with the sentence "All 
words in Chinook are very much aspirated, gutturalized, sputtered, and 
swallowed". Other Indian tribes discussed include the Klamans, 
Squaksnamish, Kallapoogas, Klickatats, Yakinaks.

     "The adventure chronicled in these pages happened some years ago, but 
the story of a civilized man's solitary onslaught at barbarism cannot lose 
its interest. A drama with Indian actors, in Indian costume, upon an Indian 
stage, is historical, whether it happened two hundred years since in the 
northeast, or five years since in the north west corner of our country."

Civilized indeed. Descended from the distinguished puritan Governor John 
Winthrop on his father's side and from Jonathan Edwards on his mother's 
side, educated at Yale, Theodore Winthrop was nothing if not civilized. A 
confirmed intellectual and a terrifically entertaining writer, he managed 
to pack a lot of living into his short 33 years, including careers as a 
lawyer, novelist and professional traveler. He enlisted in the Federal Army 
in 1861, and was killed in the Battle of Great Bethel.

Winthrop was an imaginative and urbane writer offering his opinions freely:

     "Indian maids are pretty, Indian dames are hags. Only high 
civilization keeps its women beautiful to the last. Indian belles have some 
delights of toilette worthy of consideration by their blonde 
sisterhood...", Winthrop then apparently took some opium and continued- "O 
mistaken harridans of Christendom, so bountifully painted and powdered, did 
ye but know how much better than your diffusiveness of daub is the 
concentrated brilliance of vermilion stripes parting at the nose-bridge and 
streaming athwart the cheeks! Knew ye but this, at once ye would reform 
from your undeluding shams, and recover the forgotten charms of 
acknowledged pinxit".

The last seventy-two pages of the book are devoted to "Isthmiana", a sketch 
found among the author's papers after his death. This piece describes, in 
great detail, Wintrhop's trip across the Isthmus of Panama as he headed 
home. The first chapter has a wonderfully amusing description of the 
typical party of Americans making their way to Panama:

     "There are brave deeds in unwritten history. We make a hero of Putnam 
cantering down the church steps at Horseneck to escape a leaden shower; but 
till now no chronicler has sung the praises of our party, mule-galloping 
down the dislocated pavement of a Cruces Road hillside, vainly seeking 
shelter from the peltings of tropical rain-pellets. Down the hill, and 
something else is down; for lady No. 2 is over head and ears of her mule, 
while lady No. 1 who is in advance, ascending, has preferred to dismount at 
the other end of the animal. Meanwhile the mule of gentleman No.2 has put 
the wrong foot foremost in entering a narrow callejon, and, trying to right 
himself, has gone down like a Polkist on a parquet, carrying his partner 
with him."

Unlike his imaginary party of ladies and gentlemen who care only to get 
from one side of the isthmus to the other as quickly as possible, Winthrop 
relishes the jungle, the wildlife and the native peoples, all which he 
describes in wonderfully evocative prose.

<http://tinyurl.com/nlnlx>

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