Mar 2– From Two Years before The Mast (1840) by Richard Dana
Summary: A sailor goes for his first shore leave in California.
Commentary: This is one I've really been looking forward to. I read a fair amount of naval fiction, but it's interesting to get the real life perspective, and Two Years Before The Mast is still consistently recommended almost two centuries after its debut.
Enjoyable enough read, Dana is a fine writer. Conversational, with a good balance of detail. Like several other selections, it's kind of weird to have the first part we read being mostly them off the ship, but we'll get more later in the year.
There's quite a bit of non-English in here, and it makes me wonder how the audience in the 1800s would've handled it. Some of the selection we've gotten have a hefty sprinkling of Latin, and were written (I think) with the intent that an educated person would be able to read it. Here we get a little French, but quite a bit of Spanish. AFAIK, Spanish wasn't a super common second language back then. Did people just muddle through from context clues? If you were upper crust, would you have a Spanish>English dictionary in your study or wherever? Did Dana just not care about accessibility and go for authenticity?
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