SCRAMBLES IN JAPAN AND. FORMOSA By W. W Murray Walton
Climbers, for whom valleys are troughs and places of ignominious descent between ranges, visualize landscapes rather like the cross-sectional maps to be found in the front of atlases. Though ordinary people cannot be expected to see nature in this perspective, the Rev. Murray Walton in these descriptions of tours and climbing expeditions in Japan and Formosa (Arnold, 18s.) almost persuades one that the mountaineer's convention is right and that hills are more important than valleys. Good and bad rock, ascents, escarp- ments, heights measured in feet or metres, and the lie of peaks and ranges—these here become real and exciting. . There is, for instance, an enthralling description of the famous East Coast Cliffs, which drop down to the sea from a height of 8,000 feet. However, the book contains more than this. The author tells of Japan and Japanese custom ; he has pene- trated to the wildness of Formosa with its lately tamed head- hunters ; he has seen religious mysteries ; he has joined savages on shooting expeditions. Against this primitive background he shows us the advance of Japanese adminis- tration and order. One wonders, however, if the author has read between the lines of his own work (as the reader may on page seventy-one) and asked himself whether the progress of Japanese capital is always as altruistic and admirable as he chooses to regard it. The maps and some of the illustra- tions are excellent ; the writing is good, and unaffected, and only once or twice does facetiousness, the scourge of the travel-book, make its embarrassing appearance.
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