In, Southern Seas : a Trip to the Antipodes. By
‘' Petrel." Illus- tmted by " Twain." (Grant and Son, Edinbargh.)—A pleasant little book of travel, though it tells us nothing new. The writer went to Tasmania, xi/ Teueriffe and the Cape, and after visiting New Zealand (where he saw the famous Terraces before their destruction) and Sydney, came back by way of Ceylon, Bombay, and the Red Sea. There are some spirited little pictures, and altogether the volume is one which may be looked through with pleasure.—We may also mention a very different record of travel, Leaves from the Log of the 'Homeward Bound ;' or, Eleven Months at Sea in an Open Boat. By Captain Nelson. (Chapman and Hall.) —Captain Nelson, with his brother and a friend, voyaged from Durban to England in an open boat which they made themselves. A very curious record of courage and endurance it is. "Petrel's" voyage was made under all the most comfortable conditions that modern science and its appliances can make, and the contrast lends no little force to the concluding observa- tion of "J. V.," who has edited Captain Nelson's narrative :—" It is encouraging, in a time of luxury and ease, to find that the old fearless spirit of enterprise and adventure, the old firm endurance of hardship, lives undiminished and unimpaired ; for material progress would be a doubtful benefit if it deprived us of the qualities which go to make up what may emphatically be styled a man."
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