DAN TO BEERSHEBA.* IN the closing pages of this eminently
readable book Mr. Colquhoun gives us the key to a life full of adventure and achievement, which we trust may be as fruitful in the future as in the past. "My chief ambition," he writes, ":a that the work I have been able to do, in helping to educate my country- men as to little-known regions, and in attempting to grapple with world problems, has been a contribution, however humble, towards the knowledge that is power and without which we cannot build our Empire strong and safe." To a facile pen and an agreeable style he unites the keenness of observation, the spirit of enterprise, and the flair for coming events which are equally indispensable to the explorer and the special correspondent.
As a young engineer in the Indian Public Works Depart- ment, five years before the annexation of Upper Burma,,
, • Dan to Beersheba: Work and Travel in Four Continents. By Archibald B. Colqulioun. London : W. Heinemaim. [Se. Cd. netd Archibald Colquhoun became "possessed with the desire to checkmate the advance of France in Tongking by a counter. movement towards Yunnan through Siam and the independent Shan country." It was in the furtherance of this object, the connexion of India and the Middle Kingdom by railway, that he made his famous journey "across Chryse " through the South China borderlands from Canton to Mandalay, an expedition which was accomplished with the scantiest of material resources and at the cost of intense privation and hardship. The publication of his travels brought him the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society, an introduction to Lord Salisbury, and, what was more important, a corn- mission to represent the Times in the Tongking Campaign of 1883. "Go out and tell the truth," were his instructions from the late Mr. John Macdonald, and the truth was often extremely unpalateable, both in Paris and at the headquarters to which he was accredited. For the next six years, though still nominally "seconded" from the Public Works Depart- ment, Colquhoun played a busy part, now as Times corre- spondent, now conducting a campaign at home on behalf of the Siamese railway, now as Deputy Commissioner in Upper Burma. His career in this last capacity was terminated through an act of insubordination, the gravity of which he frankly acknowledges, and he declares that he was treated with generosity by the Indian Government. From Upper Burma to South Africa and Rhodesia is a far cry, but Mr. Colquhoun would be the first to confess that he possesses some of the characteristics of the rolling-stone. Through the instrumentality of Mr. Rochfort Maguire and the late Mr. Alfred Beit he drifted into the entourage of Cecil Rhodes, and his appreciation of the Dictator provides some of the most interesting matter in the book. A short spell of administrative work at Fort Salisbury closed his experience in the Govern- ment service, and in 1891 he became free for what is his real metier,—travel, journalism, and literature.
Mr. Colquhoun closes his narrative at a date when his most successful books had not yet been written ; but he shows himself throughout an acute observer and an intelligent anticipator of the trend of events in the Far East. There are few indeed who have done more to awaken the British nation to the problems connected with the Far East and with the mastery of the Pacific than Mr. Colquhoun. His roving and adventurous life has brought him into intimate acquaintance with all sorts and conditions, and the pages sparkle with reminiscences of men who have helped to make history. Not the least attractive part of the book is that devoted to his family annals, to the Scotland and India of the early nine- teenth century, and to his father, "the fighting Doctor" in the East India Company's service who followed Sir William Knott to Kandahar and Ghuznee and Kabul.
Previous page
