At the Antipodes. By G. Verschuur. (Sampson Low and Co.)—
The author of this book, which has been very capably translated into English by a lady, takes a very comprehensive view of " the Antipodes," for he includes in it certain of his travels, in the course of 1888-89, in South America as well as in Australia, New Zealand, the Fiji Islands, the New Hebrides, and New Caledonia. The reader will in all probability, however, trouble himself much less about the title of Herr Verschuur's work than about its contents. It is, above all things, readable. It is quite true, indeed, that he has visited tolerably familiar scenes, and has very little that is absolutely fresh to say of them. Adelaide and Melbourne, Wellington and Dunedin, Rio Janeiro and Buenos Ayres, even Noumea and Samoa, are almost as well known nowadays as Birmingham, Edinburgh, and Leeds, and Herr Verschuur does not affect to have " discovered " anything about them. He is merely a keen-eyed man who describes what he has seen in a simple, almost juvenile manner. His work has, therefore, all the charm of freshness, and on that very account will be enjoyed by any boy into whose hands it is put. It is to be hoped that Herr Verschuur will find some readers in France, if only for the sake of what he has to say about New Caledonia, and the so-called " punishments " inflicted on the so•called " convicts." Surely these words are worth pondering :—" The nation maintains at great expense an army of drones who find means of shirking the work to which they have been condemned ; many an honest, hard-working peasant might envy the fate which the Government reserves for that section of the population who are steeped in vice and crime."
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