THE AMAZING JOURNEY OF DAVID INGRAM

by Eric P. Kelly '06. J. B. Lippin-cott Company; 1949; 272 pages; $2.50.

For at least a quarter of a century Eric P. Kelly has been intrigued by the story that three Englishmen back in the sixteenth century travelled from Mexico across the whole United States to St. John, New Brunswick. This tale, together with his interest in a legend of the Abenaki Indians, makes up his story.

Mr. Kelly is now an old hand at writing good stories for young people, and old, too, if the elders in question are not too sophisticated, and he makes the most of the Indian legends and of the embroideries that David Ingram made in his account of his journey in the 1589 Hakluyt Folio. It is obvious that he is sympathetic to the Indians, and rightly so.

Historians now believe that David Ingram, Richard Browne, and Richard Twide did, in the years 1568-1569, travel from the Panuco River in Mexico (near Tampico) to the St. John River in Canada. After having been stranded by Sir John Hawkins after a disastrous slave raid they were seeking the fabulous city of Norumbega, built of crystal, gold, and silver, somewhere far in the north. (According to a St. Francis legend it lies now beneath the waters of Moosehead Lake.) Mr. Kelly with an admirably controlled imagination recreates their journey through the Indian country of the Chichimichi, the Natchees, the Choktaws, to Chesapeake Bay (Verrazano Bay), through Manhattan, across Connecticut and Massachusetts to Maine, and after meeting an Indian Magician, to the crystal city of Alembagwa (as in a dream), and then to a French boat, captained by Champlain, which takes them back to England.

This is an interesting re-telling of an early American story guaranteed to hold the interest of all who like American history and folklore.