Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/167

 German Romances on America 579 from the scientific and critical works of Ratzel (Kultur-geo- graphieder Vereinigten Staaten), Polenz {Das Land der Zukunjt), Goldberger {Das Land der unbegrenzten MogUchkeiten), von Skal {Das amerikanische Volk), to the popular pictorial books of Karl Knortz and Rudolf Cronau. Contemporaneous with travel literature and the ever pre- sent Ratgeber, or counsellor for immigrants, there appeared a growing array of romances and literary sketches by German writers who had travelled in America, by some also who had not. The latter were severely critical, as Kiimberger in his Ameri- kamiide (1855), a title antithetic to Willkomm's Europamiide (1838), with a plot based in part on the poet Lenau's unfor- tunate experiences in America. The former placed a romantic halo about life in the New World, painting the noble red man in the manner of Chateaubriand and Cooper, and portraying types of frontier and pioneer life that compare not unfavourably with what was done in this department by American writers. Foremost among them was the Austrian Charles Sealsfield ("Karl Postl"), proud to call himself "Burger von Nord- amerika, " who held up to view virile, reckless, self-reliant types of American manhood as objects for emulation to enthralled Europeans. Longfellow was especially fond of Sealsfield's de- pictions of the Red River country and its Creole inhabitants. The Cabin Book {Das Cajiltenbuch) has for its historical set- ting the Texan war of independence against Mexican misrtde. Morton oder die grosse Tour presents a view of Stephen Girard's money-power and personal eccentricities. Lebensbilder aus der westlichen Hemisphdre introduces the lure of pioneer life, with its gallery of Southern planters, hot-tempered Kentuckians, Eastern belles and dandies, alcaldes, squatters and desperadoes, American types as they appeared between 1820-1840. Seals- field's Mexican stories {Virey, Nord und Siid) contain nature pictures in wonderful colours, a striking instance of which is found also in the Cabin Book, in the chapter called "The Prairie of St. Jacinto." Second to Sealsfield is Friedrich Gerstacker, a great traveller and htmter in both North and South America. Ready to take up his gun and depend upon it for his daily subsistence where nature was wildest and game most plentiful anywhere from the Missouri to the Amazon and beyond, he spent many years