THE INDIAN IN LITERATURE TEN KATE. 515 



Aimard was a very prolific writer. Among his many books I 

 mention only Les Trappeurs de l'Arkansas, Les Chasseurs d'Abeilles, 

 Coeur de Pierre, Balle-Franche. They were translated in several 

 languages. 



Of Gabriel Ferry (pseudonym of Louis de Bellemarre) the fasci- 

 nating novel, Le Coureur des Bois, and the Mexican story, Costal 

 l'lndier must be mentioned. 



Among the frontier romances of the Irish captain, Mayne Reid, 

 The Scalp Hunters, The Desert Home, and The Headless Horseman 

 stand first. His topographical descriptions, as of the high dry plains 

 and the chaparral of western Texas, are particularly truthful. 



Friederich Gerstacker, once the most popular Reiseschriftsteller 

 of his time, notwithstanding his many travels in North and South 

 America, has written very little about Indians worth mentioning. 



Strubberg, under the pseudonym of Armand, wrote several books, 

 partly based on his travels and adventures, among them Bis in die 

 Wildniss and Amerikanische Jagd- und Eeise-Abenteuer (2d edit. 

 Stuttgart, 1876). 



Ruppius, another German novelist, wrote, among others, Der 

 Prairie-Teufel, which has been translated in Dutch. 



Baldwin Mollhausen, a companion of Whipple and Ives in the 

 western wilds, was not only a writer of numerous books of travel, 

 illustrated by himself, but also of many novels dealing with American 

 subjects. In some of these Indians figure. On the whole his descrip- 

 tions are quite trustworthy. Although he belonged to an earlier gen- 

 eration, his work reaches into the twentieth century, for in 1904, when 

 nearly an octogenarian, he published a collection of essays under the 

 title of "Bilder aus dem Reiche der Natur," partly relating to In- 

 dians. The introduction to this book is a poem of some merit, in 

 which he recalls his early life in the west among the Indians, and 

 compares things with the new conditions more than fifty years later ; 

 a melancholy retrospect. In this poem the old traveler has before 

 his mind's eye a " milden Zauberabend," when he stood on the high 

 bluff of the Nebraska (Platte) River. At his feet the prairie stretched 

 "unabsehbar grim und duftig," with the teepees and campfires and 

 grazing horses of the Sioux — a picture of peace and poetry in the days 

 of long ago. And at present ? 



Jahre sind seitdein entschwunden, 

 Ueber funfzig lange Jahre. 

 Was einst Poesie der Wildnis ; 

 Bisonsherden, braune Jager, 

 Lust'ger Ritt auf Tot und Leben, 

 1st verwandelt und zerstoben 

 Vor dem Hauch des Eisenrosses, 

 Feuer fressend, Funken schnaubend. 



