Country Life in Syria. By Harriet Rattray. (Seeley.)—This is a
most amusing book, taking the illusion off Eastern life in the most un- compromising way. It consists of letters written at intervals during a period of ten years, and but for the fact that the author has continued to live in Syria, it would leave the impression that the thing would be unendurable by any civilised person. To live in the midst of a people whose talk is indescribably foul, who are unclean, mendacious, and avaricious, to get no meat but the flesh of animals dead of disease or dying of old age, to have an excellent chance of being buried alive, to be eaten up occasionally by locusts, and robbed continually by Pashas, —these are some of the incidents of " country life in Syria." However, it is clearly possible to keep a cheerful face at these troubles. Though the country is without trees, and the people without character, awi though you have nothing to speak of to eat, you do not, anyhow, have winters that begin in October and last till the end of May.
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