《书目》(Booklist)书评

Blair's novel, set in the period of western exploration shortly after the Lewis and Clark journey of 1804^-1806, is the story of a fur-trading expedition that went first by keelboat and then by horses to the Yellowstone Territory, home of the Crow Indians. Leading the expedition is Captain Caleb Bring, who "had been bred from the stock that eight generations before had faced the wilderness of the new world, at their feet New England's granite coast, at their backs the sea, in their hands the King James Bible." Other characters--some less noble than the captain--include a black ex-slave, a young botany student who had studied at Harvard, and two frontiersmen from Kentucky. These characters undergo a torturous journey in the keelboat driven by deadly currents and experience foul weather and hostile--and friendly--Indians. Journey well dramatizes incidents from a number of nonfiction works, chiefly the journals of the English botanist John Bradbury, whose Travels in the Interior of America covered the years 1809^-1811. --George Cohen