Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/850

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840 Reviews of Books and sympathetic spirit of a sister, occupies more than half of the volume, and forms its most valuable feature. Copious extracts from Mr. Schuy- ler's letters and diary gives us vivid pictures of his busy life in many lands and disclose his temper and spirit. Consul at Moscow, at Revel, at Birmingham, secretary of legation at St. Petersburg, consul-general at Constantinople and at Rome, charge d'affaires at Bucharest, minister to Greece, Servia and Roumania, diplomatic agent and consul-general at Cairo, his varied experiences furnished a rich harvest to his eager and acquisitive mind. Facile in mastering languages, intensely interested in the political complications of Eastern Europe, possessed of rare social gifts, by his letters and his despatches he threw a flood of light on the events which made his period of public service in the East interesting and important. Doubtless the most valuable public service which he rendered was the presentation to Europe and the world of the first authentic and of- ficial description of the massacres of Bulgarians by the Turks in 1876. Sir Henry Elliot, the British ambassador at Constantinople, refused to give credence to the reports sent by missionaries in Bulgaria of the cruelty of the Turks. Great Britain was at that time earnestly supporting the Turkish government, and was unwilling that it should be condemned by English public opinion. Mr. Schuyler, then consul-general at Con- stantinople, visited Bulgaria to see with his own eyes what had hap- pened. His report startled all Europe, and prepared it to expect the Russo-Turkish war which followed. During his journey into Central Asia which prepared him to write his Turkestan, his sharp eye detected malfeasance on the part of high Russian officials, and he made known the leading facts. As he was then secretary of legation at St. Petersburg, he might well have expected to hear some complaints from the Russian government. To its credit be it said, the government instead of censuring him called some of its delin- quent officers to account. The most important of the three essays in the volume is one describ- ing a visit to Tolstoi. The last one, on "The Lost Plant," indicates that Mr. Schuyler would in all probability have produced successful works in fiction, if he had given himself to that branch of literature. He was buried at Venice, where he suddenly died at the age of fifty. Had his life been spared, we cannot but think that he might have filled some of the more important diplomatic posts with advantage to his country. He would doubtless have made further valuable contributions to our literature. T B The second volume of the Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology contains two papers : the first by Cosmos Min- deleff is entitled " Navaho Houses," the second by Dr. J- Walter Fewkes, "Archaeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895." A brief descrip- tion of the large Navaho Reservation is given and the opinion expressed that those Navahos west of the divide are superior in culture to those east