This reprint of John Davis’s ‘Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States of America’ (during 1798, 1799, 1800, 1801 and 1802) is a welcome addition to the list of foreign impressions of the republic in the days of its youth, now being made accessible to others than the bibliophile. Unlike most of his compeers, Davis cared naught for the commonplace anecdotes of the traveler or for the political and statistical observations that crowd the pages of those whose humor, as the author himself remarks, ‘ bears no proportion to their morbid drowsiness.’ He does not describe his meals, complain of his bed, draw pictures of ruins, ‘ accumulate magnificent epithets ‘ or lose himself in figures. A sort of literary tramp, he wandered afoot through a great part of the fifteen states, recording what he saw and heard and did with a spicy freedom of expression and a cheery abundance of allusion to writers of prose and verse which make his book eminently readable. John Davis was one of the most observant of our early visitors, and his comments on men and things are very well worth reading. His accounts of his life in South Carolina, in Washington, Philadelphia and in Virginia are of especial interest. He visited Alexandria, Occoquan, Colchester and other places in that section, heard Parson Weems preach at Pohick, and taught school in Prince William County for several months.
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