to a dusky princess in the _terra incognita_,
and made almost as many marvellous discoveries as are recorded by
Jonathan Romer. Another and a very different writer, who selected
central Africa to be the field of somewhat similar inventions, was the
learned and ingenious Richard Adams Locke, whose astonishing history of
revelations in the moon was not more creditable to his abilities than
his singularly recovered MSS. of a lost traveller by the borders of the
Niger and in middle Africa, published in the _New Era_ journal in this
city about the year 1838. But we do not suppose Dr. Mayo was indebted to
either of these works for the idea of his story. And just as erroneous
as the charge of plagiarism, and much more absurd, is the notion that he
designed Kaloolah as a "satirical criticism on life and manners in
New-York." A writer in the _North British Review_ declares that he
"could not help laughing aloud," though seated quietly by himself, at
the "description of a musical entertainment of the court of the hero's
royal father-in-law, heaven knows where in Africa, and intended as a
burlesque on the sheer noise which is the predominant element" in all
our orchestras. We assure the shrewd critic most positively that the
author never dreamed of such a thing. Kaloolah is too well known to need
much description; its success was certain and immediate, and not many
original works have ever been published in this country which have had a
larger circulation. It evinces remarkable fertility of invention, is
exceedingly interesting, and abounds in clearly defined, spirited, and
occasionally well finished portraitures. Kaloolah, the heroine, is a
fresh and beautiful creation, worthy of any of the masters of fiction.
The hero, Romer, is designed merely as a type of the determined Yankee
adventurer, drawn with only the exaggeration demanded in works of art;
and half the seeming of extravagance in the narrative and the sketches
of nature would have disappeared if the author had not, to reduce his
volume to the size deemed by his publisher most promising of profit,
omitted all his numerous and curious notes.

Kaloolah was followed in 1850 by _The Berber, or the Mountaineer of the
Atlas_, a story of Spain and Morocco, about the close of the seventeenth
century. As a novel it is decidedly better than Kaloolah; it displays
greater skill in narration, and is written in the same pure, distinct
and nervous English. Dr. Mayo thoroughly understood