Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/296

 travels "En Russie" (1865) and "Le Caucase" (1859) we have already spoken, and there only remains "Quinze jours à Sinai," written in 1839, a book remarkable for the fact that although Dumas was never in Palestine (he wrote the volume from the drawings of Dauzats and Baron Taylor's notes), it was declared by a Caliph to be the most faithful description of the Holy Land that he had ever read! Its author, we can believe, was delighted to find he had revealed the East to the Orientals.

We must not omit "Un Pays Inconnu," 1865 (an account of a visit to the land of the Aztecs in South America, and written from the notes of a certain Mr Middleton-Payne of New York), if only because of the incidental assertion, unmistakably made, that Dumas had visited the United States. It seems incredible that a man who travelled in the public eye, as it were, and whose journeys abroad were invariably turned to delightful account, could have gone to America unnoticed, and returned to leave his visit unrecorded. We know that Dumas wished to cross the Atlantic, but was restrained by a natural fear that his negro descent might lay him open to humiliating rebuffs. Probably, either Dumas "bluffed" his readers more hardily than usual, or else the introduction and notes were written by a 'prentice who had had the desired experience.

Not yet have we exhausted the catalogue of this