Father Hennepin

UNIFORM with their excellent reprint of the Expedition of Lewis and Clark, issued a year or more ago, Messrs. A. C. McClurg & Company have now published, under the editorship of Reuben Gold Thwaites, Father Hennepin’s famous New Discovery.¹ The text is that of the second London issue of 1698, and there are facsimiles of original title-pages, maps, and illustrations, together with a breezy introduction by Mr. Thwaites, and a bibliography of Hennepin’s works by Mr. Victor Paltsits of the Lenox Library. Father Hennepin was one of the most entertaining liars who ever journeyed into a far country. His account of Niagara, of “ the incomparable River Meschasipi,” and of the savage tribes that inhabited the vast Mississippi basin, loses no whit of its interest as the learned editor of the Jesuit Relations points out the precise measure of his departure from the truth. As if in anticipation of an age of historical scholarship, note how charmingly the mendicant friar defends himself against his future annotators: —

“ I am not insensible of the Reflections I shall meet with from such as never dar’d to travel themselves, or never read the Histories of the Curious and Brave, who have given Relations of the strange Countries they have taken upon them to see ; I doubt not but that sort of Cattle will account of this my Discovery as being false and incredible. But what they say shall not trouble me much : They themselves were never Masters of the Courage and Valour which inspires Men to undertake the glorious Enterprises that gain ’em Reputation in the World, being confin’d within narrow Bounds, and wanting a Soul to atchieve any thing that can procure ’em a distinguishing and advantageous Character among Men. It were better therefore for such to admire what they cannot comprehend, and rest satisfy’d in a wise and profound Silence, than thus foolishly to blame what they know nothing of.”

No less delightful is his melancholy summary of the causes of his failure to propagate the gospel among the Indians at Fort Frontenac : —

“ They were attentive and diligent in coming to their Prayers, tho they had none of that openness of Spirit which is necessary to enter into the Verities of Religion. They came to seek Instruction with a Spirit of Interest, to have our Knives, Awls, and such like things.” Surely our contemporary apostles of the New Education, which endeavors, alike in the innocent tasks of the kindergarten and in the Graduate Schools of Applied Science, “to seek Instruction with a Spirit of Interest,” should give their days and nights to a study of Hennepin. They will find no edition so good as this. B. P.