1 JANUARY 1870, Page 28

THE "ROB ROY" ON THE JORDAN.*

Tuts, if we mistake not, is Mr. Macgregor's third canoe voyage, for his cruise in the yawl "Rob Roy," though marked by many of the same features as characterized his "Thousand Miles" and his "Baltic," equal to them in boldness, fertility of resource, and idiosyncrasy of treatment, was distinguished from them by the greater SiZ3 of the boat, and by the general scale being increased in proportion. The present work is an advance on those that have gone before, not only in the interest of the subject, but in the novelty of incident and variety of adventure. On the French and German rivers Mr. Macgregor's appearance excited much surprise, but the people were too civilized to do more than stare and comment. It is true that he looked at the country from a new point of view, but it was not one which peculiarly favoured observation. An occasional ducking, a scramble (canoe and all) through a hedge, a plunge down a rapid, a struggle with a forest of grass four feet high, gave some excitement to the cruise and the narrative. But when Mr. Macgregor is afloat on mighty and ancient waters, when he brings the most astounding novelty to the unchanging East, the result is in every way notable. The Arabs who see the "Rob Roy" going at full speed down the Jordan, or exploring the reedy bays of a lake, give chase at once, and claim the right of a man-of-war to bring strange craft to by a gun. Both on the Jordan, and on those rivers of Damascus which Naaman preferred to the Jordan, the growth of reeds and papyrus makes Mr. Macgregor look back with regret to the forests of thick grass which could, at least, be penetrated. Partly on account of these obstacles, partly from the impossibility of doing with boats as can be done with a canoe, the upper part of the Jordan has hitherto been unexplored, and the soundings in some places are mythical. According to Mr. Macgregor, the depth of the Dan source of the Jordan, which is said to be bottomless, is only five feet, and a pool at the Hasbany source, called 1,000 feet deep, is not quite two fathoms. Other estimates of former travellers are corrected in like manner, and Mr. Macgregor's researches will be of much use in determining the geography of the Holy Land. The eagerness with which be goes to work, and the warm interest which he takes in all religious questions, give an occasional incongruity to the technical parts of his book. A statement that at a certain place in the Holy Land Mr. Macgregor read the Times contain- ing an account of the formation of the Cabinet, with the Right Hon. John Bright as one of its members, is somewhat strange, when contrasted with frequent quotations from the Bible. On the Lake of Gennesareth, Mr. Macgregor moralises on the authenticity of the Christian revelation, expatiates on the advan- tage a canoe has over a boat in stemming a high sea, traces the course of the boat in which the Disciples had been rowing against a contrary wind when Christ came walking on the water, looks for subaqueous ruins close to the shore, and dodges a swimming Arab. Nazareth gives occasion to a vehement tirade against Popery, while "that ancient river, the river Kishon," is found to be haunted by crocodiles. We cannot help suspect- ing that Mr. Macgregor felt a divided allegiance to the means and end of his tour. He was a mixture of a pilgrim and a coxswain. The pleasure of tracing the Jordan from its source was great, but it was increased by the way in which the task was accomplished. We do not say that the attractions of the Holy Land would have been small without the "Rob Roy," but the "Rob Roy" has been the excuse for the journey.

It is impossible to follow Mr. Macgregor along the whole course of his cruise, which began in the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, took him some little way down the Nile and round the lakes of the Delta, was then continued on the Abana and Pharphar till both those rivers were lost in marshes, and ended with the Jordan, the Lake of Genuesareth, the river Kishon, and a salute WS the Prince of Wales. The parts of the book which will afford most pleasure to readers in general are those taken up with the descent of these rivers, and with the struggles in the various lakes, marshes, and jungles which dam up or even

• The Rob Roy" on the Jordan, Nile, Red Sea, and Gennesareth ; a Canoe Cruise in Palestine and Egypt and the Waters of Dantasau. By J. Macgregor, M.S. London. Murray. 1$69. extinguish their current. The picture given us by Mr. Macgregor of the gorge of the Abana, with its precipitous sides, its frantic rush of water, and the fallen tree blocking up the middle of the channel, is a foretaste of much of the excitement to come. Nothing, however, occurred here save the usual peril and difficulty of canoe- ing on a swift stream without chart or guide. In time Mr. Mac- gregor reached the Ateibeh Marsh, where the Abatia is lost in dense thickets of reeds and a lake of liquid mud. He pushed gallantly on, punting along while there was any stream left, and after that wading and towing. But he soon found that the task of exploring was hopeless, that the river came to an end altogether, and that it was out of the question dragging the "Rob Roy" across an unlimited morass. The same experience awaited him on the Hijaneh lake, which is the grave of the Pharphar. In both places he had to keep a look-out for wild boars, the tracks of which were plainly visible, and which might have crumpled up the Rob Roy with one blow of a tusk, leaving Mr. Macgregor without a chance of being extri- cated. The tangle of papyrus reeds which checked Mr. Mac- gregor's course on the Jordan was even more effectually matted together. It was a floating forest, with a depth of ten or twelve feet of water round it, and it was so dense that the bow of the Rob Roy could not be thrust more than three feet into it. Mr. Macgregor was warned of this impenetrable barricade by some Arabs, who did him the honour to make him their prisoner. The description of his capture after a long chase is exciting in the extreme. We see the Arabs running along the bank, sometimes in a line with the canoe, sometimes cutting across the bends of the shore, sometimes swimming out to intercept the fugitive and forming a long line in the water. Mr. Macgregor distanced them when it was a question of fair running or swimming. He broke through the line of swimmers by splashing one of them in the face with his paddle and then darting by. Another swimmer threw his arm over the "Rob Roy's " deck, but Mr. Macgregor levered him off with the paddle. But at last, on a point ahead, a man was seen taking deliberate aim with a gun. Mr. Macgregor knew that he could not escape him. The moment the shot was fired, the water around was full of naked swimmers ; they gained upon the boat in the shallows, and Mr. Macgregor was a prisoner. Carried into the presence of the sheikh of the tribe, his courage and coolness did not desert him. The way in which he offered the sheikh a pinch of salt from a snuff-box (the sheikh, who had never seen such white salt before, taking it for sugar, and not discovering its real nature till it had melted on his tongue, and had bound him by the strongest tie known to the Arabs) was a masterpiece of ready humour. "Instantly," says Mr. Macgregor, "I eat up the rest of the salt, and with a loud laughing shout I administered to the astonished outwitted sheikh a manifest thump on the back. ''What is it ?' all asked from him. 'Is it sukker?' He answered demurely, 'No, it's salt!' Even his home secretary laughed at his chief." One of the results was that instead of /100 being demanded for Mr. Macgregor's ransom, he got off by quietly slipping a napoleon into the sheikh's hand. The other Arabs who chased the "Rob Roy" on Lake Hooleh were left far behind. Mr. Macgregor tells us with considerable delight how he made a feint of landing on one promontory, and then went right across a bay to another where he had time to pick up some stones he wanted for sounding, and to get out again before the Arabs came splashing through the shallow water and breaking down the jungle canes in their hurry. One further attempt was made to catch him, and that was on Lake Gennesareth, a man taking a header Into the lake and swimming after the canoe. "But my paddle," Mr. Macgregor says, "was instantly in action, and when his wet head came up at my bows, the Rob Roy'- was backing astern full speed, and my new friend was full half a moment too late to catch hold of her, while he received an ample splashing of water from my blade in his eyes. Splendidly the fellow swam, but I merely played with him, and laughed at his frantic efforts and wild shouts. He paused and stared—quite at home in deep water—shouting at me a loud and voluble indignant address, and then he retired in defeat, while I neared the shore again. There he stood, erect and gleaming with moisture, and redundant life playing through his brawny muscles, a most strange object to behold." It was as well for Mr. Macgregor that the man shouted before taking his header, but after the escape from the guns and missiles of so many Arabs one man might seem unworthy of extra precautions.

Amid such adventures as these, the minor incidents of steering through a group of six or seven large buffaloes, of shooting at flamingoes with a rifle on a rest and missing them, and of winging another with a pistol and then driving it to camp before the canoe, will almost escape observation. It may also be doubted whether Mr. Macgregor's speculations on the actual scene of the storm on the Lake of Gennesareth will be followed with as much care and diligence as have gone towards their formation. There is much interest in learning from Mr. Macgregor's own experience, picked up while conversing from the "Rob Roy" with an Arab on shore, that owing to the clearness of the air every word spoken in the natural voice could be heard 300 yards off, so that a preacher in a boat could easily address a vast multitude standing on the shore. We do not find any lack of similar observations. If these show that Mr. Macgregor's heart was in his work, his affectionate allusions to the "Rob Roy" and his description of the difficulty of carrying her over Mount Lebanon and round a spur of Hermon tend to confirm the surmise expressed already. We must admit that Mr. Macgregor does well to be grateful to his canoe. It has taken him to places where no European, we may almost say no living man, has ever been before. The still depths of lakes enclosed by dense thickets of papyrus and haunted by a single swan, the loneliness of morasses which are shunned even by the Arabs and excite fears bordering on super- stition, are sketched by Mr. Macgregor with faithful pencil and pen, and leave on our minds a very distinct impression. It is almost superfluous to add that the tone of the whole book is bright and cheerful, that with the exception of some passages which are meant for a special class of readers or students, the general public is consulted steadily throughout, and that canoeing, which Mr. Macgregor's first voyage made popular, is now raised to the rank of a national institution, so that it reflects the most genuine sides of the English character.