Travels into North America, Volume 3 (of 3) — Reading Notes

The Editor’s Interjection

Forster’s preface is not a neutral introduction but a corrective. He writes that Kalm “seems always to shew a peculiar way of thinking in regard to the English,” attributing this to Swedish-French alliances and the influence of Swedish settlers in Pennsylvania. The editor explicitly marks passages he believes are misrepresentations, citing page numbers from earlier volumes. This editorial voice creates a layered text: Kalm’s observations are presented but immediately qualified. For readers, this means every description of English or Quaker life carries an implicit counter-argument. The preface also reveals the translator’s own investment—Forster calls the English “now at the head of the enlightened world,” a phrase that dates the volume’s political context. The tension between author and editor becomes part of the book’s fabric.

Botanical Precision and Its Pauses

Kalm’s natural history passages are marked by careful attention to conditions. He observes that the Thuya tree “grows plentiful in marches and thick woods” but rarely bears seeds there; only when “on the outside of a wood, on the sea shore, or in a field” does it produce seeds. He generalizes this pattern to the sugar-maple, white fir, and mulberry-tree. The prose is methodical, almost clinical, with dates anchoring each entry. Yet these scientific passages are interspersed with social visits. The entry for August 17 begins with a trip to the Ursuline nunnery, and the tone shifts: Kalm describes the nuns’ cells, their work, and the garden “stocked with all sorts of kitchen-herbs and fruit-trees.” The pace slows, and the observer becomes a guest. This alternation between data-driven natural history and descriptive social reportage gives the volume an uneven rhythm.

Quebec’s Convent and Mineral Well

Kalm’s account of the Ursuline monastery is detailed and respectful. He notes the nuns’ piety, the bishop’s special permission required for entry, and the silent meals where “some one of them reads to the others.” The cells are sparsely furnished: “a little bed, a table with a drawer, and a crucifix.” He also records that young ladies are boarded there for instruction in reading and religion, allowed to visit relatives “once a day.” Immediately after, he mentions a mineral well “about a quarter of a Swedish mile to the west of Quebec,” prescribed for costive cases. The juxtaposition is striking: from cloistered silence to medicinal waters. Kalm also assures readers that “there are no snakes in the woods and fields round Quebec whose bite is poisonous.” These brief, factual statements close the excerpt, leaving the impression of a traveler who collects observations of very different kinds without always connecting them.

Readers should attend to the editorial frame: Forster’s notes may appear as footnotes or bracketed comments, and they alter the authority of Kalm’s claims. The volume rewards those who read for shifts in register—from the precise naturalist to the curious visitor—and who consider how national bias shapes even scientific travel writing. The excerpts here are incomplete; the full work likely contains many more such juxtapositions.

Reading about Forster’s editorial friction and the quiet discipline of the Ursuline convent, I remembered how a traveler’s voice can fracture unexpectedly. I once felt that same strange pause with Travels of Lady Hester Stanhope, Volume 2 (of 3) — Key Ideas to Explore, where her proud solitude blurred into something tenderer. Both books left me holding a page, wondering who truly wrote the margins.