Sonora Sketch Book

John Hilton MACMILLAN

THIS is not a book on Mexico, nor even an exhaustive study of Sonora. It is rather an experiment in sharing . . . memories.” John Hilton’s mild warning in the preface to this first book may well serve as an apologia for his expositive limitations. By his own account, the author was moved to experiment with book-writing after mulling over a sheaf of pencil sketches, with marginal notes, made over a period of eight years while roaming the State of Sonora, in northwestern Mexico adjoining Arizona.

Mr. Hilton is neither a brilliant writer nor an accomplished artist, but his anecdotal stories have an intimate fireside quality, and his tight little drawings neatly limn characters and settings. He has had a lot of nomadic fun and more than the usual amount of misadventures to he found almost everywhere in Mexico once the traveler strays off the Pan-American Highway.

In the Callejon, a block-long passage in Alamos, Mr. Hilton found the Beggar Who Smelled bike Violets, who gives the title to the most charming tale in the book. A flacon of Parisian essence, the wedding gift of a Frenech husband, spends its last fragrance on shoddy garments, to please passers-by and perfume the memories of a gentle old woman recalling days when the influences of the court of Maximilian were felt as far away as Sonora.

The general uneasiness of Mr. Hilton in his efforts at wide vistas could have been allayed by sound professional advice during the inchoate stages of his experiment. Excessive use of quotation marks in It is running prose throws it off plumb, and he is allowed, in several instances, to be made prey for a sophisticated magazine with a voracious appetite for misconstructions.

Although he cannot be included in the writing fraternity of more worldly and less jaws-agape excursionists such as Henry James, Richard Halliburton, and Margaret Halsey, Mr. Hilton has his say for adventure as he finds it over in his corner of the continent. In addition to finding them exhilarating, he has succeeded in sharing some of his lighthearted memories.

WILLIAM C. ESTLER