write. If they come out at a period when curiosity about the region
described is predominant, they are fairly certain, no matter how
wretched, to achieve temporary success. But there is no kind of literary
production to which, by the very law of its being, it is more difficult
to impart vitality. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is perfectly true that
the greatest hinderance to their permanent interest is the information
they furnish. The more full, specific and even accurate that is, the more
rapidly does the work containing it lose its value. The fresher knowledge
conveyed by a new, and it may be much inferior book, crowds out of
circulation those which have gone before. The changed or changing
conditions in the region traversed renders the information previously
furnished out of date and even misleading. Hence the older works come in
time to have only an antiquarian interest. Their pages are consulted only
by that very limited number of persons who are anxious to learn what has
been and view with stolid indifference what actually is. Something of
this transitory nature belongs to all sketches of travel. It is the one
great reason why so very few of the countless number of such works,
written, and sometimes written by men of highest ability, are hardly
heard of a few years after publication. Travels form a species of
literary production in which great classics are exceedingly rare.

From this fatal characteristic, threatening the enduring life of such
works, most of Warner's writings of this sort were saved by the method of
procedure he followed. He made it his main object not to give facts but
impressions. All details of exact information, everything calculated to
gratify the statistical mind or to quench the thirst of the seeker for
purely useful information, he was careful, whether consciously or
unconsciously, to banish from those volumes of his in which he followed
his own bent and felt himself under no obligation to say anything but
what he chose. Hence these books are mainly a record of views of men and