ACROSS ASIA.* Mom is an interesting and not entirely unprofitable
amuse- ment in vogue among Art students and immature Art critics, which consists in strolling through an unfamiliar gallery or collection of pictures, and endeavouring to assign as many paintings of mark to their painters as possible without refer- ence to the catalogue. In duo time, the official list of the pictures is consulted, and the powers of the connoisseur can be estimated.
If books could be given to us without a title-page, it might in some cases be an entertaining exorcise of critical sagacity to name the author ; or in the case of a writer hitherto unknown to fame, to estimate his position, his acquirements, or his tastes. Now, if Our Future Highway had been thus placed in our hands, we should have had no difficulty in arriving at an apparently certain estimate of the author.
A young English gentleman,, for whom Pall Mall had no charms, and whom the Shires or the coverts had ceased to please, had determined to seek new ground in Asia Minor, and after seasoning himself for some time at Cyprus on his way thither, took horse at Beyrout, and made his way by irregular stages to Baghdad. There he heard that there was warm work at the Cape, and disappointed at not being able to go there, he suddenly came back to England, and revenged himself for his disappointment by padding his Diary with a little ancient history, and publishing it in two volumes in an attractive binding. The thing would have been perfectly clear, had it not been for two supplementary chapters, which have nothing whatever to do with the story, but in which the claims cf the rival routes for the proposed railways from the Mediter- ranean to the Persian Gulf—from Europe to India—are dis- cussed with intelligence, with knowledge, and with imparti- ality. Aud, indeed, this should be so, for when we turn at length to the title-page, we find that we have been read- ing the work of Commander Cameron, who is not only a Companion of the Bath and a Doctor of Civil Laws, a "medal- list" of four scientific societies, a corresponding member of. .eleven learned bodies on the Continent, and a member of half- a-dozen more in England, but who has a European reputation, amongst those who are ignorant of these honours and distinc- tions, as the man who marched Across Africa, and who told the world how he had done it. And as a work of travel by Mr. Cameron, we confess that Our Future Highway is a most disap- pointing book.
We may gather from its pages, if we did not know it before, that the Turkish Government is at once one of the most actively bad and passively worthless in the world ; that Turkey in Asia is al country of great natural resources, but that they are sadly in need of being developed ; that a European Government, under European surveillance, would probably tend to develop them; and so forth. But Mr. Cameron seems much more anxious to tell us how many gazelles he hunted and how many " pig" he shot, and of the many. and exciting chases which proved the worthlessness of his greyhound " Nimshi," and the exceeding great merit, speed, and endurance of his favourite horse, " Sultan." These may all be very pleasant souvenirs to Mr. Cameron himself, and may possibly be of interest to his first cousins and mess- mates ; but to the general public, and especially to those who are anxious to learn something with regard to our future -highway across Asia, they are wearisome in the extreme. One cannot avoid comparing Mr. Cameron's book with one on the same subject that we reviewed not much more than a year ago in these columns. Mr. 0-rattan Geary travelled from Bombay, or Karachi, to Beyrout, with the same object in view as that which impelled Mr. Cameron to travel from Beyrout to Karachi; and while the work of the former—an almost unknown author—abounded with valuable and pertinent information, the latter, though written by a well-known and distinguished traveller, is little more than a sportsman's diary.
In what wo have called the supplementary chapters, Mr.
• Our Future highway. By V. Lovett Cameron. London: Macmillan and 0o.
Cameron, after premising that " the question of railway com- munication with India is a very large and important one to this country, and as many rival routes are competing for the prime position amongst our future highways between Occident and Orient, it is very necessary that we should judge fairly, dispassionately, and calmly of the various advantages and dis- advantages which belong to each," goes on to enumerate no less than ten different routes which have at various times been pro-
posed for the great Indian Railway. The scheme of which Mr. Cameron approves, and which he has, no doubt, very good rea- sous for preferring, although he has not chosen to tell us how he arrived at them, is, as far as we can recollect, very much the
same as that approved of by Mr. 0-rattan Geary, in the work that we have already alluded to. The Mediterranean terminus
suggested by Mr. Cameron is Lower Tripoli, a town which he tells us is remarkably healthy, with a good water supply, a tramway, two good roadsteads, and great natural facilities for the construction of an excellent harbour
The present trade of the port is mostly local, consisting prinei. pally of fruit from the gardens round the town and grain from the districts near Horns and 'Tomah ; but, nevertheless, the exports even now amount to upwards of thirteen million francs per annum. This trade has great capabilities, and might be almost indefinitely ex- tended, as large tracts of well-watered and fertile land are lying fallow, owing to the want of transport."
Mr. Cameron's proposed line of railway, starting from Tripoli, would go by Horns (Emessa), crossing the Orontes by a bridge only sixty feet long, traverse a rich grain country to Hamah, and by the towns of Hama. and Mils to Aleppo. From Aleppo to Mosul, 340 miles of railroad could be constructed, according to our author's estimate, for £5,000 a mile, including the cost of the bridge over the Euphrates ; and from Mosul to Baghdad the distance is only 180 miles. Prom Baghdad to Bushire, on the Persian Gulf, is 470 miles.
Mr. Cameron's last chapter is excellent ; he has served up the cream by itself. The following extract is a fair specimen r-
" Everywhere daring our journey we found the people anxious for the construction of roads and railways, at Tripoli, Urfa, Diarbekr, and elsewhere, we found people of wealth and position who wore willing not only to aid in their construction by moral support, but who would also invest money in the undertaking. All power of initiative has, however, been crushed out of the mass of the people ; and it will be necessary for the inception of public works that support be found in Western Europe. I have lately heard from Constantinople that a number of entrepreneurs and promoters of companies are there, all trying to got concessions for railways and other public works in different parts of the Asiatic dominions of the Sultan, but that most of these people are needy speculators, who only want the grants they ask for in order to make money for themselves, and so that they can lino their pockets are perfectly indifferent as to whether railways are over constructed or not Whilst the Seraglio clique, in all its abomination, continues de facto to govern Turkey, so long will all our endeavours to improve the general state of the country prove futile."
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