[Adventures and Achievements of Americans]

image 1image 2image 3image 4cropped image 1

ADVENTURES AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF AMERICANS: A series of Narratives illustrating their HEROISM, SELF-RELIANCE, GENIUS AND ENTERPRISE. By Henry Howe, Author of HISTORIES OF VIRGINIA, OHIO, AND THE GREAT WEST; TRAVELS OF CELEBRATED TRAVELLERS; LIFE AND DEATH ON THE OCEAN, &c. New York; Geo. F. Tuttle, 102 Nassau.

Here is a splendid octavo of 732 pages, beautifully got up, on excellent paper. Besides the numerous engravings, the vignette is a superb affair. Then there is a handsome map of the Ocean Telegraph, interesting to everybody. It would be impardonable not to notice the very beautiful mezzotint of Captain Nathan Hale, the Hero Martyr of the American Revolution, which is separate from the work, and intended for framing, given to every purchaser of the book.

As to the Narratives, they all possess uncommon merit and interest; and many of those which are historical, if they had not been collected an published, must have been lost to history. The lovers of the marvellous will find them all solid, instructive and exceedingly entertaining, and the reader opening at hap hazard, will be apt to rush right through the story at a single delve. Now if the numerous greedy devourers of the senseless, execrable trash, known as the "blood and thunder literature," would let such nonsensical fitcitons alonge, and make up their minds, if they have any, to read truth stranger than fiction, they would get thoroughly disgusted with those queer convoctionsconcoctions​ periodically issued, and sucked down with unaccountable relish! One often asks how is such a state of things possible, that they should not discover that tit is the quintessence of foolishness—uselfess and demoralizing in every way. We cordially commend this instructive volume to all readers.

We give a single extract from the narrative of Andrew Sherburne, who was a prisoner in the Old Jersey Prison Ship, and therefore especcially interesting to Brooklynites:

"We finally reached New York, but O horror of horrors! only to be put on board the floating Bastile, that thrice accursed contrivance of fiends incarnate—the Old Jerry Prison Ship! The very name is enough to send a chill of terror through the soul. One of the fittest types of the infernal regions on a small scale that Satan could invent, if that which I call a type be not a branch of the same business in which devils are employed. There were several hospital or prison ships at the Wallabout—the Whitby, the Strombolo, the Scorpion, the Hunter, and the Frederick; but the old Jersey has acquired the most Satanic renown in history. These Ships of Death were anchored about 100 feet apart, and about the same distance from the beach. On both sides of the Wallabout Bay, many human bones have been found. The late General Johnson, who resided in the vicinity all his life time, had often passed along the shore after a northeastly storm, and seen human skulls as thick as "pumpkins in a field." Nearly 12,000 prisoners were poisoned, starved, or died of fever on board of these prison ships. It is probable that 5 or 6000 more died from ill treatment and famine in the churches and sugarhouses of New York, and at various naval stations. Those who where buried at the Wallabout were sewed in their blankets. Those who died in the prisons of New York, were cast into the dead-carts at the prison doors, as they died, and were stripped before they were buried in the pits prepared for that purpose. Many prisons were barbarously exiled to the East Indies for life."