Book Reviews, 



279 



hundred copies and has been "done into print by the Roycrofters 

 at their shop which is in East Aurora, New York." 



W. F. B. 



At first blush one hardly knows what 

 "The Shameless Diary ^^^^ Shameless Diary of 



OF AN Explorer." Explorer."^ The book is unique in 



every way. The author was a member of Professor Cook's party 

 which in 1903 made an unsuccessful attempt to climb Mt. Mc- 

 Kinley. In the words of the author "this is the story of a failure. 

 I think that success would have made it no more worth telHng. 

 It is about an exploring party, the sort that so often fails." The 

 adjective "shameless" points to the chief characteristic of the book, 

 although it is apparent from the author's defense of his motives 

 in publishing it that he does not intend the adjective to be taken 

 too literally. He professes to give in this diary an absolutely 

 unvarnished account of all that happened during the expedition. 

 He writes, "I started and maintained my record with the sole idea 

 of stating facts as I saw them, emotions as I felt them at their 

 time. . . . Maybe it has been a shameless task. I know that it is 

 without malice. For heaven's sake, do not read these pages with 

 charity." 



"If he, the explorer, is pledged to exactitude about his diptera, 

 is he not obliged, in relating human deeds at all, to record as 

 truthfully and in full how the outer waste and the ego of each 

 companion uplifted or scarred his own? If such a record be not 

 as direct, as full, as frank, as his registry in science, by what 

 hypocrisy under the sun has he right to state at all the words 

 or acts of any fellow? ... I believe that no motives of any sort 

 distort my written record, except the elements of my own tem- 

 perament and heritages. And I hope that in reporting any in- 

 herent vanity in my fellows, I have hit off hardest my own 

 insufferable egotism." This is the author's apology for the con- 

 tents of his book. The reader soon feels that some such positive 

 assertion of absence of mahce is necessary, for Professor Cook 

 and "Simon" come in for a good deal of criticism and disparage- 

 ment. Yet no one who has once begun the book is likely to lay 

 it aside before he has reached the last page. The author knows 

 how to paint a vivid picture with a few strokes. The reviewer 

 has never read more realistic descriptions of the Alaskan tundra, 

 or of difficulties encountered with pack animals in fording rivers 

 and crossing glaciers. At these points the author's ability rises 

 to the level of genius. There are not a few disfiguring crudities 

 of language and taste, and some things that had better been left 

 unwritten. But when all is said the book is one that will have to 



t The Shameless Diary of an Explorer. By Robert Dunn. The Outing 

 Publishing Company, New York, 1907. Pp. 297, with map and photographs. 



