[Sidenote: 1881.]
One of the boys said that Hearne’s Travels seemed to bring them quite
within our own time. The stately great quarto is dedicated to the
Hudson’s Bay Company, and in his holidays last summer Bedford had seen
packages addressed to their agents, lying at the station at Montreal.
Tom Rising said that in the preface to Hearne’s Travels there was a
reference to a lively quarrel between him and Mr. Dalrymple.
Col. Ingham said that Mr. Dalrymple was one of the map-makers who
stayed at home, and had to plot or put down the observations of the men
who travelled. Hearne’s latitudes and longitudes did not prove to be
quite exact. But, as to the main point, that there was a Northern Ocean
somewhere near the parallel of 70°, he settled that matter.
“But now,” said he, “you begin to come to the time when geography
itself becomes a science. You had better look into some of the
magnificent Humboldt books. You all know his name, and what he did is
what you would all like to do. Here he was, a young German gentleman,
with plenty of money and a taste for natural history. His family
was important enough for him to secure good recommendations among
diplomatists and such people. He had the favor of governments, and he
had money enough to go where he pleased.
“At that time, almost the first time, the Spanish government relaxed a
little the secrecy in which it had tried to keep all the world ignorant
of all its immense possessions. They gave Humboldt in 1799 full power
to go where he chose in their provinces in America and the East Indies.
Humboldt went, and spent nearly five years in America.
“He was in Washington in 1804, and saw President Jefferson, who was
himself a bit of a naturalist.”
The boys and girls got down different volumes of Humboldt’s Travels.
Some of them are very elegant, and there is one atlas of prints of
curious things he saw in Mexico and South America, in which, to their
joy, they found the origins of many pictures still extant in the school
geographies.
Laura was looking at his Life. “Why, Uncle Fritz, they were educated by
our dear old Campe.”
“Who is our dear old Campe?” said Emma. “I never heard of him.”
“Campe is--oh, yes, you have, only you forget--he is the man who made
the little Robinson Crusoe.”
“Oh, he is the stone-axe man?” asked Tom Rising.
Yes, he is the stone-axe man. What the children meant was this,--that
he wrote a Robinson Crusoe which some of them had read, in which
Robinson Crusoe had a stone axe. In the original Robinson Crusoe, by
the Englishman, Defoe, Robinson was supplied with the necessaries of
life from the wreck of the ship, just as “Crusoe in New York” was
supplied from the old junk-shop which had that name. But the French
philosopher, Rousseau, said that for a book of education it should
show how a man would fare who had actually nothing but his hands.
So this German minister Campe, who had been a chaplain in the army, and
had become a teacher of youth, in the hope of thus ameliorating the
condition of mankind, wrote his famous Robinson the Younger. I believe
he does let Robinson have a jackknife when he is thrown upon the beach,
though that violates the principle. When it becomes necessary for
Robinson to cut down trees he walks along on the beach, and there he
finds a stone sharp on one edge and in the shape of an axe-head. What
is more, by great good luck the water has worn through a hole in the
stone just where the handle of the axe should be fitted. So Robinson
put a handle into the stone and went on his way conquering and to
conquer.
This absurdity of the accidental axe-head so impressed the children
that they always called the book the stone-axe Robinson. Still it was a
book they liked to take down from the Colonel’s shelves, and it would
be a good book now to put in public libraries. The catalogue title of
it in English is “The New Robinson Crusoe.” In Germany it is better
known, probably, than the original. In the early editions it takes the
form of a conversation between a father and his children.
Tom Rising said, “That virtuous boy, who asks the priggish questions,
must have been Alexander von Humboldt’s brother.”
“And the stupid boy,” said Bob, “who hardly knows the difference
between a needle and a fish-hook, he is Alexander von Humboldt himself.
Stupid boys, if they are only stupid enough to be neglected by the
schoolmasters, always turn out remarkable men.”
The children laughed at Bob’s frank confession of his theory of life,
but Col. Ingham, who feared that the talk was becoming heretical,
bade Fanchon read some of Humboldt’s own accounts of his notion in
travelling.