BOOKS.

islands of the Mediterranean, made, in what year we are not, told, by Monsieur Gaston Vuillier, and translated into

English by Mr. Frederic Breton. It has a great many curious and interesting things in it, and the author's abundant and excellent illustrations make scenery, character, customs, and

costumes delightfully vivid to us. Scenery, climate, archi- tecture, and manners in the Mediterranean islands are a mixture of those of Southern Europe and Moorish Africa;.

and the human type repeats the mixture with an exaggeration of strong features, resulting from the necessity of breeding- in, that dominates the development of small island populations. Hence the curious obviousness of expression in the handsome dark faces that meet us in these studies of brigands and.. peasants, courting youths and comely maidens, who seem to jump at us with the same kind of familiarity one feels in the theatrical photographs in shop-windows. We may not have visited the islands of the Mediterranean, but we have been to the Italian opera, and we recognise our stage friends among M. Vuillier's models. Palma, the capital of Majorca, was the first place at which our travellers landed, and the description. of the view from its bay calls up a charming picture :—

"The sun rose just as we entered Palma Bay, and its ra.ss felr full on the capital .)f Majorca, which with its waving palm-trees and Arab monuments has an aspect more Eastern than European, except for the number of windmills lining the coast, and recalling familiar landscapes in Holland or south-eastern England."

It was Sunday, and also the feast of San Alfonzo Rodriguez,. and the double festival was brutally honoured by a bull-fight "sandwiched in between the morning mass and the evening procession." The bull-fight was rendered particularly revolting by the introduction of a woman toreador to give the coup de grace. One cannot be sorry to read that, after three bulls had been butchered, a fourth avenged them by rolling the woman in the dust. Palma is the birth-place and the burial-place of Raymond Lully, soldier, lover, mystic„ theologian, chemist, physician, architect, and missionary of the thirteenth century. His tomb is one of its show-places, and the legends of his bizarre life are cherished by the in- habitants,—especially that of the girl who refused his love again and again, always declining to give a reason until, over- • The Forgotten Isles: Irepreesioes of Travel in the Balearic bias. Corrica, and Sardinia. By Gaat,42 VI:oilier. Rendered into Eaglish by Frederic Breton. Wit h 167 Illustrations by the Author. London : Elinehinson and Go.

borne by his importunity, she bared her bosom and revealed the secret that she was dying of cancer. It was to discover a cure for her mortal disease that Raymond turned chemist and studied medicine. It is the boast of Majorca that it contains no malefactors except those who are brought as convicts from other countries to be confined in its prisons, no ferocious beasts, and no venomous reptiles. Also that none of its inhabitants are ever in a hurry, and consequently that everybody is in good health and lives long "enjoying the sunshine." The description of the vast stalagmite caves and underground lakes, which are a remarkable natural feature of the island, is extremely interesting; and the illustrations make it all intelligible.

As this book is likely to encourage a good many people to make holiday tours in the islands it describes, we make a point of transcribing the excellent character for cleanliness given to Mahon, the capital of Minorca :—

" Mahon is marvellously clean. Even the very pavements seem to be washed and scrubbed every day. Each Saturday, both at Mahon and at Ciudadella and the villages of the interior, the housewives clean the outer walls of their houses with lime- water. They do the same on the eve of fete-days. It is an amusing spectacle to see the women, armed with brooms of dwarf palm and immense pails of lime-water, gossiping along the walls from early morning, while they scrub and wash as if their lives depended upon it, fastening their brooms to long poles, the better to reach the higher parts of the wall."

An appreciable outcome of this bustling housewifery is the absence of vermin in the houses, a distinction rare enough in the islands to justify special mention. Our own insular pride naturally flatters itself that the exceptional cleanliness of Mahon is a result of the English occupation in the last century,—other traces of which are noted in the "quite English faces, little girls with fair hair and blue eyes, and young men with chestnut hair," whom the author frequently met in the streets ; in the games played by the children ; the general use of sashed windows; the disuse of the open gutter or sewer in the middle of the streets ; and in about five hundred words of the local dialect. One of the illustrations to the chapters on Minorca gives us a Salvator Rosa-like landscape of stony desert overlaid with upturned roots and gnarled trunks of leaning trees, tortured into unnatural shapes by the strong northerly winds. But the stony desert is intersected by crevasses rich in southern vegetation. Here is a description of a barranco After crossing an arid desert of stony mounds, we reached the edge of a huge crevasse which yawned suddenly at our very feet. I was about to dismount, but my guide caught my mule by the bridle and bade me keep my seat. The burranco is a miniature canon, a fissure of verdure running across the sterility of the surrounding country. On the uplands above, the sun scorches the cracking soil and the keen wind forbids all kindly growth. But down below in the barranco, the air is always soft and warm, and cool shadows lie across orange-trees, rose-bushes, and flower- ing plants. Passing through a narrow passage hidden between the rocks, we rapidly descended a steep path under over-arching trees through a sort of emerald twilight, pierced here and there by a shaft of gold. A stream threads the bottom of the gorge, the precipitous red cliffs on either hand alternately closing in to make a place of shadow, and widening out to let the sun play on the green strath. The waters murmur incessantly. Here it contracts to a mill-race, and after turning the wheel expands once snore to a placid stretch of scarcely moving water, which mirrors the oranges and roses on the bank. Aquatic birds flash across the surface, and where they dive, break the still expanse into a whirl of quivering ripples. On every side are orange-trees, lemon-trees flowers, sweet perfumes, songs of birds and beating of feathery wings, while palm-trees wave their plumes against the warm cliffs that carry the eye to the unbroken blue above. Houses cling to the cliffs like swallows' nests, and where the ravine is bifurcated a tall isolated rock pinnacle rises like a cathedral spire. For an artist the subjects' are ready-made, though no palette could render the rich colours of the sub- tropical vegetation or the bright, almost crude, hues of the rocks."

The description of this gorge, as the traveller passed through it again on the return journey, in the evening of the same day, introduces to us a quaint custom of the island :—

"At intervals progress was barred by hastily built stone walls or immense tree-trunks, while locomotion was hampered by bundles of faggots, heaps of dried weeds, or loose branches. The foliage above our heads, however, was hung with coloured ribbons and garlands of flowers and fruit, like the route of a triumphal procession."

The explanation of these obstacles and decorations was that a wedding procession was expected to pass next day, and that the custom of the island is to place every po..sible obstacle in the way of brides and bridegrooms in order to remind

them how difficult is the path to happiness ; while wishing. them at the same time abundance and felicity through the symbolism of the festoons of fruit and flowers. The bushes and weeds would be actually set on fire as the bridal party approached.

The grim story of the sufferings of the five thousand five hundred French prisoners marooned on the rocks after the capitulation of Baylen in 1809, makes the principal tradition of the small island of Cabrera. The prisoners, whose numbers were rapidly diminished by starvation, remained on the island till 1814, when a small remnant were taken off by a French transport. The story of the pet donkey that had to be sacrificed, is touching, though we find it difficult to accept literally the particulars of the partition of its carcase :—

"The only humanising influence on the island was a solitary donkey, which happened to be wandering over the rocks when they arrived. This poor animal did good service in carrying water and wood for the sick, and soon became the pet of all. But he also fell a victim. The boat which brought supplies from Corsica was several days overdue, and the position of the men became desperate. They had eaten everything they could find down to rats, lizards, snakes, and shell-fish. Many died of starvation, and others succumbed to terrible convulsions, induced by eating poisonous weeds, and even wood and stones. There was no help for it. 'Martin,' as the donkey was named, was sacrificed, and his body cut up into four thousand five hundred pieces."

Iviza, another small island of the Balearic group, should be remembered as a place not to go to :— "Fever is endemic at Iviza. Besides such obvious causes as putrifying vegetable matter, stagnant water, filthy streets, drained by gutters which are no better than open sewers, there is no doubt that the confined and sedentary life led by the people helps to foster epidemics."

The customs and superstitions must tend also to spread infect ion :—

"When the death-bell rings, all the children of the neighbour- hood are gathered together to give the last kiss to the face of the corpse, no matter what disease was the cause of death."

A belief that the earthen pots, which have been the sole manufacture of the island from the days of the Romans, have the property of neutralising all poisons, so that anything may be drunk out of them with impunity, has possibly also some share in the unhealthy condition of the population. One strange custom connected with courtship should tend, on the other hand, to produce strong nerves in the women. The proper attention for a lover to pay his sweetheart is to steal silently upon her from behind, and suddenly discharge his musket into the ground at her feet ; and a well-brought- up girl never winces under the trial. To discharge a musket in the middle of the sitting-room, after spending a pleasant evening with his sweetheart's family, is also the right way of announcing that there is no ill-feeling on the part of the young man. He must fire, however, before he says "Good night." If he says "Good night" first, and fires afterwards, that means a challenge to a rival, and the sequel is likely to be a midnight murder and a blood-feud.

We hear more of blood-feuds when the scene changes to Corsica. There we also find a race of giants inhabiting a mountain region. Seven feet seems to be an average height for the men of Calasima (Calasinia, by the way, means "near the summit"), but the giant par excellence, whose impressive portrait makes a fall-page illustration, measures 7 ft. 4i in. These men are considered to belong to a special race re- sembling the ancient Goths. Another illustration in this part

of the book shows us "the ghastly horseman," a dead man propped up on the back of a trembling horse, to ride to his grave : the precipitous nature of the mountain tracks making any other mode of conveyance, even for the dead, impossible. Corsica is more particularly the home of the romantic brigand and the poetical shepherd, and a long description of the ceremonies attending a shepherd's wedding has the true Arcadian ring.

There is more of the gloom of life and less of its laughter in Sardinia. M. Vuillier approached it with joyless anticipa-

tions :—

" Sardinia, rarely visited even by its Italian masters, and almost: unknown to the rest of Europe, had always haunted my imagina- tion as a kind of accursed land, blighted by malaria, and peopled by morose beings half-savage and wholly brigandose."

And the first sight of its coast was in keeping with his, expectations:— "The steamer forged slowly on, and Port Torres, the first Sar- dinian town, and the port of Sassari hove in sight. Its appearance

is not inviting. The harbour resembles a stagnant pond, and the low houses on either side of the long main street are squalid and swarming with pallid children, like a back alley in London slums."

But even Sardinia has its bright spots, and one of the prettiest scenes described in the book is the morning view from Demlo, a Sardinian village 2,000 ft. above the sea. Altogether the scenery of this island is magnificent; its brigandage is full of romance, though of a sombre kind ; and its handsome peasants and their extremely beautiful costumes furnish excellent subjects for the artist. The Roman Amphitheatre at Cagliari is, moreover, a sight of sufficient historical in- terest to make it worth while to visit the island, if there were nothing else to be seen in it.