The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp

Rating:
Summary: A well-written tale of a lost era.
Review: A minor gem. This forgotten book is a classic travel-adventure set in 1920 Peru. Hats off to Dixon-Price Publishing for resurrecting it. Pity that the copy-editing was not done a little more skillfully, as there are a number of typo's and mis-used homonyms in the book the product of unskilled use of computer spell checker.

Still, this is a minor quibble. (A map would have been nice too). Harry Foster's casual employment in the mines, cities, and jungles of Peru are a classic of early 20th Century travel writing. Some might feel that his characterizations of Peruvian Indians, Peruvian "Anglo's, and the Irish are a bit harsh. However, he presents a well-balanced narrative of the country, and its types. This lost world (the 1920's) is a rough and tumble time, gone forever. A great loss. Foster preserves those days for posterity through his colorful writing and astute observations of people and cultures.

Many modern travel writers could learn from his unselfconscious writing style. The book never misses a beat. A combination of irony and genuine love of people, regardless of differing cultures, lifts this book out of the mundane. I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating reading; we can only hope for future volumes
Review: The Adventures Of A Tropical Tramp is the travel narrative of Harry La Tourette Foster, who spent most of his life after the conclusion of World War I wandering the main roads and back roads of the world, from Mexico and South America, to Asia, the South Pacific, The Caribbean, and the Mediterranean. This particular travelogue is the story of his travels in South America following his discharge from the army. He went aboard a tramp steamer bound for Peru. Landing with no funds or resources, he took a series of odd jobs, eventually becoming a reporter for a Lima paper. He went on to join two missionaries trekking overland to the headwaters of the ..., then continued on adventure filled journeys down the ... tributaries. He ended his travels playing ragtime piano in sleazy bars until he was able to earn his passage home to New York. The Adventures Of A Tropical Tramp is fascinating reading and we can only hope for future volumes detailing his later itinerant travels to far away places and foreign climes.