IN THREE CONTINENTS
ONE of the sad things about books of travel is that they disprove so many picturesque fables. Take the boomerang, for example ; its chief hold on our imaginations is due to the fact that it comes back so neatly and docilely to the feet of the thrower. Professor Dahl tells us that a great expert, throwing it for that very purpose, can make it behave in some such fashion : " But when throwing at a definite target nobody can calculate on its return. And no native cares about the return."
None the less, it is an interesting weapon. Spears, clubs, knives and other missiles travel in a straight line ; they can be avoided with comparative ease. The boomerang, on the other hand, travels in a curve, and, by varying the flight of the weapon, the thrower can make it reach its target from a great number of directions. "There is hardly any limit to the variations in its course. If one attempts to avoid it, it appears to pursue one."
Professor Dahl made a long journey through the wilds of Australia twenty years ago. He kept a very keen eye upon native customs, and describes them vividly. His story is not very inspiriting ; there is little enough of heroism or nobility among the aboriginal tribes. But there is plenty of quaintness and humour.
" Chivalry is not strange to their character. The little boys were very often having sham fights with little spears and clubs, throwing and parrying at short distance. If one happened to be accidentally hit BO as to be hurt, the lucky hitter ' immediately ran over to his less lucky opponent, and proferring his ugly little head, received in return and without turning a hair a good whack over the cocoanut.' The sham fight was then immediately con- tinued."
The account is full of detailed observation, and the style of the narrative is straightforward and terse.
Mr. Frederick Lewis tells us of his life in Ceylon with an equal simplicity. His story is much more personal than Professor Dahl's ; the interest is in the man as much as in his circumstances. He has gone through many vicissitudes with a great strength of character. He worked as a planter in Ceylon when planting meant peculiarly hard work and demanded the utmost versatility in dealing with natives. it is not to be wondered at that when he came for the first time to England he found much that puzzled him in the laxity of the inhabitants. He had been accustomed as a youth to spending all day at work for barely enough money to buy himself a new pair of boots when the old ones were falling frOm his feet. He had been accustomed to keeping very much awake when men were plotting his death, sending .him magic charms, hiding behind trees to jump out on setting fire to wooden sheds while he was inside them. And in• these conditions he had made for himself a moral code of great integrity. He expresses his opinions with an engaging assurance and candour. Sixty four Years in Ceylon is delightful book to read, both as a gallery of odd portraits and as " the simple story of a man's life in one of our colonies."
There is more orderly information in A Book of South India. Mr. Chartres Molony spent twenty-one years in the I.C.S., and he had exceptional opportunities for observing Indian life. He was sent to rebuild the ruined State of Banganapalle when its ruler was deposed, and he worked for five years. on an Indian self-governing body. His work iS the more valuable as he constantly shows his sympathy with the native population and 'his understanding of them: He has none of the superiority and aloofness too often found in Angle-Indians. Here, again, were circumstances which called for initiative and quick judgment. Mr. Molony make no complaint against the Indian peasant's calm and perpetual lying in his own interests. It is merely a great difficulty to be met in the dispensing of justice. He tells how an Indian magistrate, seeing that the European form of oath was quite meaningless to the peasants, unauthorizedly prescribed a really binding form of oath. A mass petition was presented
against the innovation. " In this way," wrote the signatories; " we are compelled always to speak the truth, and are put to much inconvenience."
But there are many traits of the Indians which Mr. Molony. admires. Chief amongst them is their cheerfulness and trail= quillity among irritations • " I fret and sweat over the lack of some trivial convenience ; the village does not worry overmuch about the very possible uncertainty of next month's meals. . . . In that I am more en- lightened, I am surely more efficient than these people around me yet they draw a living from the arid plains where I should starve, did not their charity come (I am pretty sure that it would come) to my aid. The village has a wisdom of its own, and I do not under; idand it. But the days when I thought it folly are behind me."
The obverse of this picture comes where Mr. Molony describes conditions in Madras. The contrast between European and Indian ideals could hardly be drawn more distinctly than in a couple of sentences which he writes on labour conditions " An obstacle. in the path of real improvement has always been the contentment of the Indian labourer with a mere animal existence,. which the soft, warm climate of the South renders not intolerable. The workman has to be taught to want more."
A Wayfarer in Sweden is more of an easy and conversational guide-book than a record of personal experiences. The most interesting part, perhaps, is the account of the visit cf Cromwell's ambassador, Bulstrode Whitelocke, to Queen Christine of Sweden. But it is throughout a well-informed, agreeable and witty book.
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