Who doesn’t love Project Gutenberg? I recall the first time I had heard of this project way back when, and I considered it to be the coolest bit of technology, the scanning and preservation of old, out-of-copyright books that would otherwise have gone forgotten.

I developed a collection of “Classic Adventure Novels” and wish I had the time to peruse them all. In fact, the next best advancement I came across back then was Librivox recordings, a similar digitizing project of books in the public domain, only here in audio format performed by amateur readers (oftentimes very amateur). Perhaps that would be a better option for tasting all those “new” old authors.

A Roosevelt Favorite

Captain Thomas Mayne Reid is an author I’d been hoping to try ever since I came across his name in David McCullough’s Mornings on Horseback, that great biography of Theodore Roosevelt’s early years. In it, McCullough had commented on young Teedie’s reading habits (which were gargantuan), and among his favorite authors at the time was this Captain Reid:

Captain Mayne Reid…was among the most popular authors of the day and especially with boys…An Irishman, Reid had exchanged the life of a tutor for that of trapper and trader on the American frontier and his books–The Boy Hunters, Hunters’ Feast, The Scalp Hunters–were rollicking adventures, full of action, violence, and grand-scale visions of the out of doors. God was in nature–a force–and nowhere so plainly as beyond the Mississippi.

(Mornings on Horseback, 115)

An Adventure for Naturalist Youth

This particular book, Castaways, was targeted towards an audience of boys aged 9-12, but certainly not most kids of today, those who are so inundated with visual entertainment that they wouldn’t have made it through Chapter 1. Captain Reid wrote this novel of adventure on an exotic island as a means of introducing his young readers to the vast natural world. He writes early on that, since “we are unwilling to interrupt the course of our narrative by disquisitions on subjects of natural history,” he instead will leave much of the scientific information (including Latin names of flora and fauna) relegated to the footnotes. What a way to write!

I imagine that Captain Reid wrote a bunch of animal names on pieces of paper and then drew them out of a hat in order to write this tall tale of high adventure, but I could be wrong. His story begins with the escape of a few brave souls following a shipping accident (the Captain and his crew who remained with the ship were all eventually killed in Borneo). Hammerhead sharks terrify the survivors, and the mighty albatross—that seafaring omen of good luck to all sailors far and wide—promptly stabs a floating sailor in the skull with his beak in order to feast on his brain (17).

Hunger and thirst strike the crew quickly upon their landing on an island, but “prolonged beyond a certain point, hunger loses its keenness of edge, through the sheer weakness of the sufferer, while the agony of thirst knows no such relief.” (20) They eventually slake both, feasting specifically on such island delicacies as “the Singapore oyster” (a gigantic species of clam), durian, maleo’s eggs, and hornbills. His description of the durian especially was exciting to me, as I was actually feasting on the smelly fruit while I read:

A rich, butter-like custard, highly flavoured with almonds, gives the best general idea of it; but intermingled with it come wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, brown-sherry, and other incongruities. Then there is a rich glutinous smoothness in the pulp, which nothing else possesses, but which adds to its delicacy. It is neither acid, nor sweet, nor juicy; yet one feels the want of none of these qualities, for it is perfect as it is. (31)

It was also great to learn more about such birds as the maleos, who have a very curious method of burying and hiding their eggs, and the hornbills, whose monogamous relationship is made even more curious when we see the male plaster his female and her eggs into a tree hole with mud. (73) We also get to witness a pretty exciting dual between a red gorilla a giant crocodile, before the gorilla, in a King Kong scenario, kidnaps the young daughter of the party, which forces the men deep into the swamps to hunt him down. The scenes were unbelievable, but again, putting myself into the nine-year-old shoes of a young Teddy Roosevelt in the late 1800s, I’d have been on the edge of my seat.

An Aged Book, So Beware

A few literary notes to make include the following. The author haphazardly tosses about “the N word” in describing a man from Malaysia, which dates the book more than anything. Sensitive readers take note. Then there’s also that curious quirk of old authors who can fit snugly into 100 words what they could have said in 10. For example this little passage:

To depict the feelings of her father, under such circumstances, would be a task the most eloquent pen could not successfully attempt. Agony like his can never be described. Language possesses not the power. There are thoughts which lie too deep for words; passions whose expression defies the genius of the artist or the poet. (118)

…which is just an incredibly long way of saying, “There are no words.”

Conclusion

All told, I really enjoyed the book, despite its wild and unbelievable scenes. I love the method of introducing the natural world to readers this way, in action. The footnotes were informative, though being 150 years old, I’m not certain how accurate they really were. Nevertheless, I look forward to trying my eyes (or ears) at the Hunters series which McCullough mentioned sometime in the future.

©2019 E.T.