(South America)
by Chase S. Osborn
Front Cover - Volume I:
by Chase S. Osborn
Front Cover - Volume I:
This is a very lovely two volume set of books about South America. The books contain “over 50 illustrations and four maps.” These “First Edition” volumes were published in 1909 by A.C. McClurg & Co., Chicago. The books measure 5 5/8 inches by 8 ¼ inches. This set has been “married,” that is Volume I and Volume II were originally parts of different sets and have been brought together to make the set complete. Who knows what happened to their original counterparts over the last 92 years? Volume I contains xvii, 312 pages including 24 photographs (on unnumbered pages) and three maps - two of which are fold outs. Volume II contains xii, 331 pages including 28 photographs (on unnumbered pages) and one fold out map.
Both volumes have blue cloth pictorial covers with pictorial paste on. The title is in gilt on the front and down the spine. Both covers show signs of wear to the edges, corners and to the top and bottom of the spine. The spines are tight and the hinges are strong. Volume I is in slightly better condition overall but both are in very similar condition. The spine of Volume II is slightly discolored - see scanned image below and the top and bottom of the spine of this volume are beginning to show signs of fraying. Volume I contains a personal book plate which looks somewhat like a personal calling card which is pasted on the inside front cover. Volume II has two rubber stamp markings showing its previous owner - “Fond Du Lac County Mental Health Center.” The fore edges and bottoms of the pages are deckled. The pages are printed on a good quality paper and show no signs of rips or foxing. The photos are printed on good quality, gloss paper in a blue tint. Exceptions noted, the overall condition of these wonderful old books is very good.
Contents:
Volume II
Appendix
Spanish Proverbs
Table of Distances
Index
Excerpt - Introduction:
If the reader will extract from this volume as much information as the author obtained in writing it, the work of both will have been justified.
The literature in English upon South America is scant compared with the magnitude and importance of the subject. Since the days of Robertson and Stevenson there has been a dearth of books upon South America until the last decade. Perhaps Prescott’s charming classic, the “Conquest of Peru,” which was published inn the time intervening, was compensation enough for the quiescent stat of all other writers.
Within the last decade there has been a recrudescence of interest in South American countries. Even touring agents and travelling people, both commercial and otherwise, are awakening to the fact that here are other Riverias, and the Patagonian channel rivals the Norse coast, and that there is a charm of nature and newness in South America quite equaling in attractiveness the ancient monuments of Egypt. Nowhere are there wilder men than in the Amazonian jungles; not even in the Himalayas are there more majestic peaks, or so many, as in the Andean Cordilleras; Africa presents no greater range for zoologist or botanist and is not so accessible. If one seeks rest, adventure, or exploitation of new regions, he can find it all in South America.
This volume undertakes in simple manner to tell some things of South America and the people that vitalize its thirteen counties, and to give routes of travel and such suggestions as the author found valuable in traveling in South America form Panama to Patagonia and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Another might have done this work better and supplied more, but no one could have addressed himself to the task more willingly or found more happiness in the work.
It is pleasant to know that there are such new and wide areas wherein the growing population of the earth can be sustained and developed to still higher achievement along lines both material and ethical.
A better Spain and a superior people of Spanish tongue are building anew in South America. Who knows but that their unique temperamental qualities, combining imagery with persistence, mental with bodily vigor, chivalry with commercial instinct and a higher conception of morals, will not make a more indelible impression upon the history of the earth than Old Spain Made?
We shall regard them with kindness and sympathy, aside from which every nation must work out its own destiny, succeeding in comparison wit others just as its sustained vigor, economy, wisdom, and morals compare…
End excerpt
Excerpt - Social Customs - written almost 100 years ago
In the social conditions of South America, which are sufficiently the same from Panama to Patagonia to regard them as a whole, is to be found one of the real reasons for their attitude of unfriendliness, or at least of negative regard, toward the United States. The color line is not drawn in any South American republic; not even in Argentina, the most white of all, where there are those who undoubtedly would wish to do so but do not dare.
The negro and Indian are peaceful enough and have been much married into the whites. Not only do the Spanish and Italians find no objection to the blacker natives, but the Germans quite generally and not a few English young men marry them and thus undoubtedly increase the percentage of hemoglobin in their blood, as well as nearing themselves to the land and its people in a progressively homogeneous manner. But the American, as a rule, is prejudiced and it does not matter a whit to him whether Solomon or Hannibal were Ethiopians, or whether the Araucanians were never conquered. The South Americans take careful note of this. Slavery was abolished in most of the republics many decades before the emancipation took place in the United States. They seem to be provokingly pleased to remember the days before ‘60, when the United States was administered entirely by Southern influence, and they do not seem to recognize much change…
End Excerpt
Note: The final Illustration - Puente Infernillo
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