Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/168

S8o Non-English Writings I roaming about aimlessly before he discovered his ability with the pen. He found friends interested in his Streif und Jagdziige durch die Vereinigten Staaten Nordamerikas (1844), and he turned to fiction. There followed rapidly upon one another Die Regulator en von Arkansas {1845); Die Flusspiraten des Mississippi, and other Mississippi pictures (i 847-1 848); Gold, Ein CaUfornisches Lebensbild {1856) — all blending fic- tion and actual experience. His most popular work and in many respects his best, Nach Amerika! Ein Volksbuch (1855), describes the fortunes of a shipload of German immigrants landing at New Orleans and making their way up the Missis- sippi for permanent settlement. Industry and honesty, after learning to adapt themselves to new conditions, succeed in Gerstacker's works, while unsteady character and indolence are given stem justice. Gerstacker cannot be accused of arousing false hopes, for he draws with a reaUstic pen, and does not fail to emphasize the hardships and disappointments of frontier life. His heart is with the immigrant rather than with the older settler, against whom he warns repeatedly. Similarly Otto Ruppius in his Der Pedlar (1857) and its sequel Das VermacMnis des Pedlars (1859) aims to give a just view of the German immigrant and refugee in America, and his books deserved their popularity. Friedrich Strubberg, who wrote under the pen-name Armand, was a voluminous writer whose best works are those descriptive of the German frontier settle- ments in Texas, e. g. Friedrichsburg, die Kolonie des deutschen Furstenvereins in Texas (1867), for he had lived there for many years, on the vanguard of civilization. His Carl Scharnhorst, Abenteuer eines deutschen Knaben in Amerika (1863) remains one of the most popular German stories for boys, while many of his other works stray widely in the realm of fiction without Baron Miinchhausen's saving grace of humour. Balduin Moll- hausen, the last of the popular writers of exotic romances, was employed on several United States Government exploring ex- peditions in the Far West as artist and topographer, and dur- ing this time he learned to know the Western Indians well and became an authority on the physiography of sparsely settled areas. His first account of his travels in 1858 was introduced by Alexander von Humboldt, his second, three years later, was also of scientific merit, Reisen in die Felsengebirge Nord Amer-