The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp
By Harry L. Foster
"The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp is fascinating reading and we can only hope for future volumes detailing his later itinerant travels to far away places and foreign climes."
--The Bookwatch, Midwest Book Review
The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp is the first travel narrative written by Harry La Tourette Foster, a veteran of World War One who really couldn't "go back down on the farm" after he had seen Parie. Gripped by a impulse to adventure, Foster spent most of his life after the war wandering the main roads and back roads of the world, first in Mexico and South America, then later in Asia, the South Pacific, and the Caribbean.
This first book, however, is a splendid narrative of an average man turned adventurer. The plucky and resourceful Foster finds himself a shoe clerk in Panama after working his way through Mexico following his discharge from the army. But clerking is much too tame for Foster.
Taking his last few pesos, he books "steerage" on a tramp steamer bound for Peru, and lands there with but two pennies in his pocket. Taken under the wing of a "tropical tramp," one of a breed of men that wandered the tropics in search of fortune and work in the aftermath of the war, Foster learns to support himself by taking odd jobs, first as a mining clerk in the high Andes, then as reporter for a Lima paper which gives him access to much of the interesting life of the region. Subsequently, he fills his time as war correspondent "without a war," and then diplomatic attache, a position that brings him into contact with the highest--and lowest--of ex-patriot society.
Finally bored, he joins two missionaries and helps them trek overland to the headwaters of the Amazon, and then joins them on an adventure-filled journey down the tributaries to the Amazon itself. Finding himself penniless again in a dilapidated outpost of colonialism, he takes a step that becomes a trademark of his travels--playing ragtime piano in the sleaziest of bars until he earns his passage home to New York.
Foster's observations understate his resiliance and courage. His prose flows easily between stories of the characters he meets and descriptions of the places where he works or visits. If you want a window into the reality and excitement of true adventure during the early part of the 20th Century, this is the book to start with.
"A fascinating early account of a travel adventure throughout South America by a young man who sailed on a tramp steamer to get there. The author gives a wonderful account of his travels to the capital of the Incas, the city of the kings, canoeing wild rivers and much, much more."
--Boat Books UK
Title: The Adventures of a Tropical Tramp
Author: Harry L. Foster
Publisher: Dixon-Price Publishing
Mechanicals: 6x9 - trade paperback
ISBN-10: 1-929516-16-9
ISBN-13: 978-1-929516-16-2
Price: U.S. $17.99