should be read carefully by all travelers to Venezuela. The portions treating of the several industries and of trade are comprehensive and filled with concise information not obtainable elsewhere. The several commercial districts are treated intimately and at length. The Dutch West Indies are here treated because of their proximity to Venezuela and because they lie in the same general trade district with that country. The entire work is the result of personal investigation in Venezuela.

Because of its excellence, this should be a desk book for all exporters, manufacturers, and investors of the United States who are interested in South America. It should also be on the shelves of all teachers of Hispanic American history, because of its basic background material. By all means, should it become a text book in all educational institutions which give courses in foreign trade. A rare service has been performed by the government in its publication.

JAMES ALEXANDER ROBERTSON.

Glimpses of South America. By F. A. SHERWOOD. (New York: The Century Co., 1920. Pp. ix, 406. Illus.; index. $4.00.)

This volume is well named. It is the result of random notes made by its author during two visits to South America. On these two visits he says that he simply followed the beaten track, going into no out-of-theway places nor enjoying any special privileges. While his visits have been longer than those of the usual traveler, they have not, he says modestly, been long enough for him to interpret the real significance of the contemporaneous life that is going on from year to year in South America. Because his notes, which were jotted down originally merely for the personal amusement of the author, cover exactly the ground that would be covered by the ordinary traveler from the United States, they have been polished up and made into the present volume.

The book, so the author states in his preface (from which the foregoing has been taken), is an unconventional and informal one. However, it is an extremely interesting volume, partly because of this fact, and partly because Mr. Sherwood has had the faculty of careful observation. He has a happy sense of humor which he has not taken pains to exclude from his notes as published. A glance at his table of contents gives no indication of the contents and style of treatment, and the reader, unless warned by the preface (which some through habit willl probably skip, thereby depriving themselves in this instance of a pleasure) will come upon a field of nuggets from the outset.

The notes take us to Kingston and Panama, Peru and Chile, over the

Andes to Buenos Aires, to Montevideo, to Rio de Janeiro, and home again. The description of the journey over the Andes is of especial interest and is well related The notes on Argentina and its capital take up considerably more space than any other region. The reader should not miss the description of the inland Argentine city of Mendoza. The artistic appearance of the city of Buenos Aires impressed Mr. Sherwood continually, and he refers again and again to this. Its cosmopolitanism also comes in for mention. Throughout many a quaint incident is related and much useful information imparted.

In his note on the Spanish spoken in Argentina (pp. 295-296), the author falls into a slight inaccuracy in ascribing the "j" sound given to the liquid "11" and to the "y" to Argentine usage. These sound are heard constantly in Andalusia and in other parts of Old Spain, and are, moreover, in common use among the Spanish gypsies. They are, therefore, an importation from the mother country, but may, of course have become accentuated in Argentina. One must always distinguish between the Castilian Spanish and that of other parts of Spain.

This is not a guidebook-a fact distinctly stated by the author-but it is a book to take along with the guidebook, and when serious and humorless companions and regular guidebooks pall, to open and enjoyand, withal, enjoy with advantage. The historian will find no history of special note in it, and the economist will find no carefully digested economic facts. But they, as well as common travelers who go to enjoy and, perchance, to gain new laurels in business, will find it a pleasant companion.

JAMES ALEXANDER ROBERTSON.

The Gulf of Misunderstanding, or North and South America as seen by each other. By TANCREDO PINOCHET. (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1920. Pp. vii, 275, $2.50.)

The author of this book is the Spanish editor of the monthly paper called The South American, which is published in New York. The volume was written in Spanish and translated into English, appearing first in monthly installments in the paper above mentioned. The translation we are told in a special announcement, was made by Cecilia M. Brennan and William Sachs, while Charles Evers, editor of The South American, "guided by the Spanish version, revised and polished the English text". The result has been a very readable and interesting text.

This is not a story. It is rather a series of essays on the viewpoint

of people in North and South America. The introduction is so interesting and so well shows the reason for the book, that we can with impunity quote a considerable part of it. In this book says the author, a man and a woman speak.

The woman-so says the book-was born and educated in Chicago, but she might just as well have been born and educated in Buffalo, New York or Seattle. She is a woman of the country. The man-so says the book-was born in Santiago, Chile, but he might as well have been born in Argentina, Colombia or Ecuador. He is a man of Latin America.

The man-so says the book-wrote letters to his wife about this country. It is of no particular importance that these letters were addressed to his wife; they might as well have been sent to his son, to his brother, or to one of his friends. Or he might have talked to them on the subject instead of writing, or else he might have only thought about these matters instead of writing or speaking about them. Any man who has left the environment in which he has always lived sees things other than those which he has seen before, and is guided by a new train of thought.

The woman-so says the book-is a member of the Censor's Department of the United States Government during the war. It would make no difference if she were not. She is only a symbol, because every woman is a member of the body of censors in war-time and in time of peace, when the beliefs and moral code of her country are attacked.

The woman repudiates the way of writing-or speaking, or thinking of the representative of another race which is in contact with hers, and she makes her protest, in writing alongside what the man has written.

So much for the setting of the book. The censor happens in the course of her duties to read all the letters written to his wife by the Chilean who censures the life and institutions of the United States with an unsparing hand. Struck by the first of these letters, she wrote also to the wife giving the viewpoint of the United States. The letters with their comments embrace the subjects of idealism, democracy, imperialism, black and white, woman's suffrage, marriage and divorce, religion, prohibition, education, character and habits, and Pan Americanism. One may not agree with all that has been written in these letters, either pro or con, but he will recognize the book as a thoughtful production. The book is ingeniously written and its attempt to remove prejudice between North and South Americans can but be applauded. Modern business men, travelers for pleasure, and students who go from the north to the south or come from the south to the north for purposes of study are swiftly removing these prejudices. Direct contact is making for a real Pan Americanism.

JAMES ALEXANDER ROBERTSON.

NOTES AND COMMENT

ADDRESS OF DON ADOLFO BONILLA Y SAN MARTÍN, PROFESSOR IN THE CENTRAL UNIVERSITY OF MADRID, IN THE EXERCISES COMMEMORATING THE SEVENTH CENTENARY OF THE BIRTH OF ALFONSO X., THE WISE, IN NOVEMBER, 1921

Translated from the Spanish by CONSTANTINE E. MCGUIRE, of Washington, D. C.

Gentlemen:

In the name of the Royal Academies of Moral and Political Sciences and of Jurisprudence and Legislation, I have the honor to join in the expression of respect which is this day paid to that great monarch of the thirteenth century, to whom civilization and culture owe so much, and who was without equal from Charlemagne to the Medici in the subjects which are the concern of these academies, as was acutely remarked by the Count of Puymaigre.

As a man, he was congenial and attractive, and yet as a governor and statesman singularly unsuccessful. He did not know how to curb the excesses of the nobility, whose lack of discipline-so characteristic of Spaniards-continued to increase in violence until it attained the shocking proportions with which the disastrous epoch of Henry IV. is associated. Thus, sometimes it was Don Diego López de Haro and his son Don Lope Díaz, and again his own brother, Don Enrique, or Don Nuño de Lara, with his many barons and gentlemen, and finally, even his own son Sancho, who embittered his days with rebellion and conspiracy. He caused his people grave embarrassment by his regulations on money and weights and measures. He frittered away his time miserably, because of his constant concern regarding "the business of the Empire" of Germany, the one thing in regard to which he was able to accomplish when he returned from Belcaire to Castile was, as the chronicle sets forth, the conviction that "in the business of the Empire. they were mocking him and he had expended in this journey much substance". But we must bear in mind, if we are to judge him fairly, that there is no first cause in the chain of events in this old world of

ours and that, in fact, the most serious events of the most disastrous period in history find their precedent, if not their justification, in the preceding social and political states. If it was true that Don Sancho rose in rebellion against his father, it was also true that the father of the Wise King, Saint Ferdinand, was also actually at war with his father, Alfonso IX. of León. If the gentry were fond of disturbances in the time of Alfonso X., they were no less so in the days of Ferdinand III. who was obliged to struggle with Rodrigo Díaz, among others, and Gonzalo de Lara. If the king aspired to become Emperor of Germany it was because his mother was Doña Beatriz, daughter of the Duke of Suabia, the Emperor. One man may be the father of another and he may bring his own life to an end at a given moment, but neither the birth nor death of nations depends upon the individual will no matter how powerful it may be, nor may the will of one suffice by itself to determine the prosperity or decline of a people.

As was said by the Prophet, if the pastors scatter and drive away the flocks from their fold, the Lord is able to gather them together, and make them return to their own fields, where they will increase and be multiplied.1

If there is anything truly distinctive of the period of Alfonso the Wise, it is, in my opinion, the fact that it represents, better than any other epoch in medieval Spanish history, the Oriental Renaissance, which did not again take place in anywhere near the same degree until the nineteenth century. This Renaissance is obvious in all the work of the Wise King. In his scientific work it is to be found, inasmuch as it is known that his Lapidarios and the Libros del Saber de Astronomía are based on Arabic and Hebrew authors. So far as his literary work is concerned, his book Calila y Dimna is of Oriental origin, and so too are the Bonium or Bocados de oro, the Poridat de las Poridades, De los Juegos de Ajedrez, and Dados e Tablas. In his historical work, the use of Arabic sources is common in the Estoria de Espanna and the Grande et General Estoria. As Ríos has called to our attention, the legislative work of the King indicates Oriental influence in that a large part of the sentences and reflections on political principles which are to be found in the second Partida are taken literally from the Arabic book Poridat de las Poridades, which was also known under the title Enseñamientos y Castigos de Alixandre.

This legislative work is perhaps the part of chief interest today of the work of Alfonso the Wise. All the rest will be a source of pleasure

1 See Jeremiah, XXIII, 14.