Journey Round an Album
The Empire on Stamps. By Patrick Hamilton. Peter Davies.
7s. 6d.)
POSTAGE Stamps of the Empire are miniature hoardings : tiny posters show aboriginal tribes, statues, historic scenes, mountains, bogs, beaches, like a display of the old Empire Marketing Board seen through the wrong end of a telescope. It was Mr. Hamilton's excellent idea to write a guide to these pictures, and no collector to whom stamps are more than a careful study of perforations, water-marks, errors can fail to find his book fascinating. (Incidentally, it is an ideal present for a boy, who will be enabled to learn far more history and geography in his album than in his class.) Who can fail to be entertained by the out-of-the-way information ' in this description of a Gibraltar stamp?
A striking view of Europa Point is found on the threepenny stamp of 1938. Lloyd's Signal Station is located here; and.may be seen in the vignette, as also may Europa Chapel, a building which in its history has had a distinctly varied life. Originally 'a Moorish Mosque, it Ircame in turn a Spanish Convent, the Duke of Kent's Brew.ery, and latterly a Church of England. chapel; To sceptics who feel they have little to learn from the pictures on stamps, I would set an examination paper: Describe the capture of Aden (a view of it is on the 3 anna centenary stamp). Which is the sacred and unsealed mountain of the Dyaks, where traditions says that a lovely Chinese princess is held in captivity by a dragon (see a midshipman's sketch on the i8 cent. North Borneo issued in 1894 and 1897)? Where is the Lake of the Sorrowing Heart? One could go on like this fOr a longtime, concluding, perhaps, with a question on the mandated terri- tory of Kaiser Wilhelmsland, where there are goldfields so iso- lated by mountains that the only transport is by air, and stamps have to be issued in denominations of £2 and £5 to cover the
heavy precious. packages, .
HENRY TRENCH.
Previous page
