Books: The Long Mile

THOMAS GAGE'S TRAVELS IN THE NEW WORLD (379 pp.)—Edifed and with an Introduction by J. Eric S. Thompson—University of Oklahoma ($5).

There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile.

In terms of the old nursery jingle no more crooked man walked a longer mile than Thomas Gage, an English Dominican friar turned Protestant clergyman, and no man more thoroughly squandered the possibility of a heroic memory as missionary, adventurer and writer. Thomas Gage is forgotten today so that his name is not even listed in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, yet his narrative of...