BOOKS ON SPORT AND TRAVEL.*
MR. BAILLIE-GEOHMA.N knows the hunting grounds of the West as well as most men, and his pursuit of the wapiti will interest those to whom the hunt and the trophy are the desire of their lives. He is nothing if not accurate, and dis- courses with all the zeal of one learned in measurements and abhorrent of "yarns," the dimensions of wapiti-heads, and the errors of a well-known " sportsman's guide." To us the account of his life in Kootenay, and the concession of land he obtained, the triangular legal fight over a mineral claim, and the very narrow escape he had from one of the prospectors, is one of the most interesting features of the book. Sprowle, the man in question,had threatened both Mr. Baillie-Grohman and Mr. Hammil. Having already had an unsuccessful rifle-shot at our author, not long afterwards be boarded the train which was conveying his intended victim to the nearest point where he could swear a warrant. At the point of a "Colt's frontier " he was going to compel Mr. Baillie-Groh man to dis- mount at the next station, but changed his mind at the last. If one man escaped, the other, alas ! did not. Poor Mr. Hammil was shot in the back, and Sprowle, by an act of Providence, in spite of his six hours' start, walked right up to the constable who was waiting against hope to catch him before crossing the line. He was hung, after frantic efforts and three respites, for his brother was a wealthy American. The whole story reads like a tale of the "forties." One of Mr. Baillie-Grohman's projects was the turning of the Kootenay River into Columbia Lake, the source of the great river of that name. Unfortunately, the engineers of the great trans-conti- nental railway then under construction were by no means pre- pared to cope with the vastly increased body of water, and the plan was quashed. Its author says that the leave to do it ought never to have been granted. Though his pioneering efforts meant heavy losses, Mr. Baillie-Groh man must have the satis- faction of knowing that he opened the door for others, In his account of the Pacific Coast salmon he quotes Dr. Giinther's remarks anent the " quinnat" salmon, one of • (1.) Sport and Life in Western America and British Columbia. By W. A. Baillie-Grohman. With Illustrations and Maps. London : Horace Cox. [15s.] —(2 ) Somaliland. By C. V. A. Peel. With Illustrations. London : F. E. Robinson and Co.—(3.) Pictures of Travel, Sport, and Adventure. By "Old Pioneer." With Illustrations. London : C. A. Pearson. [15s.]—(4.) In Dwarf .Land and Cannibal Country : a Record of Travel and Discovery in Central Africa. By Albert B. Lloyd. With Illustrations and Maps. London : T. Fisher Unwin. [215 ]—(5.) The Highest Andes. By E. A. Fitzgerald, and other Con- tributors. With Zoological, Botanical, and Geological Appendices, Maps, and Illus- trations. London : Methuen and Co. [30s. net.]— (6.) BeyondPetsora Eastward: Two Summer Voyages to Novaya Zemlya and the Islands of Barents Sea. By Henry J. Pearson. With an Appendix by Colonel H. W. Feilden. With Illustra- tions. London : It. H. Porter. [225. 6d.]— (7.) The Caroline Islands. By F. W. Christian. With Illustrations and Plans. London : Methuen and Co. [125, nil.] —(,8.) Temperate Chile. By W. Anderson Smith. London : A. and C. Black. [DX 6d.)—(9.) Tropical Colonisation. By Alleyne Ireland. London : Mac- millan and Co. [7e. 6d.]—(10.) The New Pacific. By Hubert H. Bancroft. London : Kegan Paul. Trench, and Co. [13s.] —(11.) In the Valley of the Rhone. By Charles W. Wood. With Illustrations. London : Macmillan and Co. [10s.]
which, relating to the running of the fish in fresh water, is that "during this journey the `quinnat ' has never been been known to take or attempt to take any nourishment.' If this means artificial bait, we beg to differ, for in some rivers they take the spoon bait freely, and have been known to take the fly. We can recommend the Kootenay experi- ences to everybody, and the amusing chapter on Western servants, by Mrs. Baillie-Grohman, to all ladies.
Mr. Peel's two hunting trips in " Somaliland " will make many a man's mouth water, though the trying experiences of the desert journey will as probably parch their throats in anticipation. The multitude of game he saw reminds one of the palmy days of South Africa, when countless herds of antelope roamed the veldt, and men did not need to walk a yard from their camp to shoot. There is no particular dis- tinction about Mr. Peel's descriptions ; he confines himself to the actual hunting, which be gives vividly enough, and the difficulties of travel. He killed a great quantity of game, and had to, if we consider his following. It is, in fact, a descrip- tive butcher's bill. There is a complete list of the beasts and birds known to inhabit the country and some capital illus- trations.
There always has been, and, for all we know, always will be a charm about South African travels. It was, and is still, admittedly the best of all hunting grounds, so that in spite of many published reminiscences a man with the pen of a ready writer can be sure of readers. But the "Old Pioneer" has more than this ; he belongs to the older generation who saw the country in the days that are no more, and who possessed a style of their own and were students of men and manners as much as hunters. This is not the only difference between the modern and the old-time hunter. The latter had imagination, his movements were not so hurried, and the fascination exercised by the long treks is put before his readers, in fact he insists on making his readers under- stand it. Among the hunting trips we have an impressive description of the Victoria Falls, as fine a thing as we have seen. Scarcely less interesting is the trading trip to the Orange Free State. The description of the arrival of the waggons outside a Boer's house, the ceremonial coffee- drinking, the appraising of the stock to be exchanged, the carpet with the samples spread out on it, and the bargaining, and, finally, the portraiture of the Boer and his family are really most graphic ; we seem to see the whole affair. The women and men folk, the " Old Pioneer" declares, " were in those days a pack of thieves. This seems a bard thing to say, but I had exceptional opportunities of observing, and so far as the Boers of the north of the Orange Free State and the south of the Transvaal were concerned, it is absolutely true." While two showed the merchandise, the other two, one, with a note-book, kept guard. A reel of cotton or a skein of silk was simply noted down, but a protest was made if any- thing of value went. When the bargaining was over, every- body adjourned to the house, and a bottle of " squareface " and a dance concluded the business. The party organised a shooting match and were much disappointed at the shooting of the Boers,—at a mark, mind you. The " Old Pioneer" expressly states that in shooting at game at unknown distances in the open the Boers seemed have a knack. From South Africa we travel to the Antipodes, and undergo some of the anxieties of a remittance man in New Zealand, and a very pleasant picture of the Colony the " Old Pioneer " draws for us. Those of our readers who have other productions of his pen must add Pictures of Travel, Sport, and Adventure to them, and those who have not will to-day find in it much of immediate interest.
With these reminiscences we had better mention another book on African travel by a missionary, Mr. A. B. Lloyd, who saw the Soudanese rebellion in Uganda, and then travelled through the great pygmy forest of the Congo. It is a plain, unvarnished tale, and gives a very real picture of life and travel through that most trying and unhealthy country. The most valuable portion of Mr. Lloyd's volume is his appreciation of the natives ; he has a natural hatred of any oppression, and it is with great pleasure we read his notices of the various Englishmen who represent the Crown in the latest of British protectorates. The order to which Mr. Lloyd belongs is not always in agreement with the military exigencies of the time or place, and thus we must applaud his generous appreciation of the trials of an officer who has often to be seemingly harsh and arbitrary because of the lives dependent on his control of the natives. Mr:Lloyd's inter- views with the pygmies were most interesting. He found them intelligent, and was struck by their muscular develop ment. Once be narrowly missed losing his own life and those of the party, as he was on the point of shooting a monkey in a tree when his gun-bearer stopped him in time; it was a pygmy, and pygmies use poisoned arrows. Some capital illustrations help to enliven the book. He tells a very unpleasant tale, we are grieved to say, of the treatment of the natives by the Belgian representatives.
In The Highest Andes Mr. Fitzgerald recounts the con- quest of Aconcagua and Tupungato, the monarchs of the Western Hemisphere. It really seems as if the limit of human endurance as regards capacity to breathe a rarefied atmosphere has been at last reached. The party made trial camps and trial climbs, tried in every way possible to attain the acme of physical fitness before starting for the Andes, and then only after the most fearful struggles and iron per- sistence managed to crawl—we can use no other word—to the summits, the leader of the party himself being unable to do it. The camping at such extreme elevation was in itself a great effort, witness the contortions of the sleepers as re- corded by each other. The author of Mont Blanc, we remem- ber, suggested that the amount of wine consumed by early Alpine climbers helped to account for some of the mountain sickness, but it seems stimulants are an immense aid to Andean mountaineers. Eggs beaten op in port wine sounds nourishing, and some of the party speak highly of this pre- paration. The very fierceness of the struggle against external and internal physical conditions makes Mr. Fitzgerald's book of extraordinary interest, and we may well look forward to the next onslaught on the giants of the " Roof of the World." The photographs are of great beauty and interest. One must not forget Dr. Giissfeldt's heroic and almost singlehanded attempt at Aconcagua so generously acknowledged by the author ; if any man deserved success the plucky German did.
Northern Siberia has great attractions for the ornithologist, and Novaya Zemlya in particular for Mr. Pearson and his brother. Interesting, even to those who do not know a black- bird from a thrush, are these long days spent hunting for the nests of many familiar visitors to English. shores. The author says his book Beyond Pc tsora Eaqtward may seem too " birdy "; we do not find it too " birdy," but only too " bird- nesty." We know it is of interest to get complete sets of eggs with variable markings, but when we hear of four hundred and forty eggs of Briinnich's guillemot being rifled from one loomery we feel that it is rather wholesale. No two were alike, and Mr. Pearson goes on to say : "It is scarcely possible these abnormal varieties can serve any useful purpose." John Ruskin, perhaps, would have differed from this remark. But does not Mr. Pearson give himself away? Interesting as the habits of the birds are, and excellent as the photographs are, the continued shooting of nesting birds palls a little even on the brutal sportsman's taste. The flowers are wonderful, as Mr. Trevor-Battye's description of the Tundras led us to imagine.
Mr. Christian studied some remarkable ruins which exist in Ponape and Yap Islands of the Caroline group, rains of ancient courts and council houses built from the basalt prisms familiar to those who have seen the Giant's Causeway. On some islands mortar has been used to cement rubble together, but the ruins are mostly of these great basalt prisms laid lengthways and crossways ; the " headers" and " stretchers '' of the mason, the "chock and log" fence of the settler, and the " wooden brick " style known to every child. To us the manners and customs of the Ponapeans and other islanders are of more interest. The builders of the ruins are no more, though doubtless their blood runs in the veins of the islanders, who are Malays if anything. Mr. Christian has a very copious and exhaustive pen, but he carries us along with considerablevigour and the easy style of a scholar, and we would not have missed his description [of the natives at
the price of more than a moderate curtailment, a description to which the excellence of his photographs lends additional charm..
"A Progressive Spain" is the alternate title of Temperate Chile, a daring, but not unwarrantable, phrase ; for Chile is progressive, though whether the progressive spirit is doe to the descendants of Spain or the English immigrants, we may not have much doubt. Chile suits the Englishman, yet he is never tired of grumbling at the country while he is there. Mr. Smith rightly objects to the unsympathetio attitude, both racial and religious, so many Englishmen retain; it is unfortunately the attitude of ,our settlers everywhere, more or less. We must remember, however, that in parts the Chilian settler was not well treated; he represented an energetic element that has ever been incompatible with the Spanish temperament. Mr. Smith is hopeful about Chile, and this though be knows the failings of the Chileno and the wild state of much of the country. For the rest, we recom- mend the careful descriptions of the life and scenery as a useful guide to intending travellers.
Mr. Alleyne Ireland (Tropical Colonization) has a great deal to say about the labour system of the tropics, and the results of different colonial governments, con- trasting, for the purpose of illustration, English, Dutch, and French systems. His statements are clear and succinct, though we cannot always agree with his con- clusions. The Dutch system in Java seems to work admirably, and he compares it with the Indian system, which seems to us unfair, for the Dutch have a fairly simple pro. blew before them, whereas India,--well, the most sanguine of mankind never regarded it as aught but a wonderful pro- blem which cannot be governed by any system. Fancy the Germans or the French trying to make the wheels go round in that clock,—why, there would not be a Frenchman left in France ; all would belong to the Indian bureaucracy. How- ever, the Dutch system is instructive, and the point that they admit no proprietary rights in lands may surprise English ideas ; it has worked well so far because all are interested in the prosperity of the cultivator. In " Forms of Govern- ment," Mr. Ireland states shortly the governing systems of various colonies. On the colonial future of his own country the author does not speak very hopefully. The feeling of many in the States is summed up in his opinion by the remark made to him by an American gentleman, that "after all, the experience of other nations in the tropics is of little value to us, for none of the other people were Amerieans."
By " the New Pacific " Mr. H. H. Bancroft means all the countries bordering on that ocean, and he has found it a suffi- ciently large order to describe them and their race problems, trade, and future. He has a vigorous, though occasionally flippant, method of discussing some points, and at times a somewhat doubtful taste ; but the keenness of his outlook is undoubted, and he goes straight to the point. Moreover, he is admirably frank, and there is a delightful absence of cant, for which we cannot be too thankful. The two chapters in which Mr. Bancroft sums up the opposite views as regards the Philippines, writing in the first as a red-hot anti-expan- sionist, in the second as an Imperialist of the first water, are worth all the opinions we have seen yet. As far as we can judge, he realises that expansion is inevitable. Mr. Bancroft administers backhanders freely all round, and says rude things about his own Congress, but he is most readable, and full of suggestions, and readers who skip the first part about the war, and some of the pages in the latter half of the volume, which are merely glorified specimens of guide-book literature, will find a quantity of valuable and particularly entertaining ideas.
We have left the best to the last. In the Valley of the Rhone is one of those delightfully illustrated antiquarian and archaeological books of travels for which Mr. Charles Wood is becoming well known to us. He and his companions found many unknown gems of architecture and quaint relics of Roman and Byzantine days in their journeys, but lest this antiquarian lore, which is never intrusive, might possibly become monotonous, it is lightened with a kindly and gently humorous account of the life of to-day in strange old-world towns and almost unknown districts. For he is an artist in manners and customs, as well as in description, and a long line of monks and hotel-keepers, nuns and peasants appear before ne, in a word, all those picturesque figures that make travel in Southern France the pleasantest of all pilgrimages to the artist and the man of culture. One is uncertain whether to admire the descriptions of architecture and scenery, or the inimitable dialogues more; on the whole, the latter being the rarer gift, we must value it more.
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