PREFACE
TO THE SECOND EDITION
When, a few weeks since, I saw my little book of South American travels issued from the press, I supposed that my connection with it had ended. My publishers now ask for a preface to a second edition. I take this occasion to express my thanks for the very kind manner in which my boyish descriptions of a boy’s travels have been received by the public and the press. I can only wish that my book had been more worthy of the liberal patronage and the generous praise which have been bestowed upon it.
If I had followed my own inclinations, I should have given my narrative a thorough revision, and thus have corrected some of the crudeness of my first literary effort. To this revision, however, my publishers objected, on the ground that it would raise the suspicion of genuineness as to these being the travelling observations of a lad seventeen years of age, and impair also the freshness of the narrative. My book has therefore been given to the public with but slight alterations from the original draft.
I should have been glad to have made the story of my travels more fruitful in scientific results. But I had no instruments for making accurate observations, and had not the opportunity to preserve and transport many objects of natural history for comparison and verification. Such observations as I have made on topics relating to natural history, during my wandering on the inhospitable Pampas of South America, if they are superficial, I have sought to make them at least truthful.
Nathaniel H. Bishop.
Oxycoccus Plantation,
Mannahawkin, N. J.