BOOKS.

NEW GUINEA"

WE experience a great difficulty in commenting upon this remark- able book, which we have read with much pleasure and interest. That difficulty is not easy of definition, or rather of assign- ment to its real source, which may be in our own obtuse- ness; but the fact is, we cannot make up our minds whether the author of Wanderings in the Interior of New Guinea is in earnest or not,—whether his work is a record of one of the most memor- able feats of travel ever performed, in the course of which re- markable discoveries have been made ; or a brilliant narrative after the fashion of Daniel Defoe, in which imagination riots wildly in- deed, but clothes itself with the demurest realism of form. The closeness of detail, combined with a certain vagueness and large- ness about localities, the matter-of-fact reporting of the most extra- ordinary sights and- occurrences, and especially the adaptation of the "natives" who figure in the narrative to their parts in what would be the cleverly-contrived combinations of the story, if they be not genuine adventures, incline us towards the latter hypothesis. Suppose Captain Lawson should only be another Robinson Crusoe, with the differ- ence of having gone deliberately to the unknown land, and imported his man Friday, whose name is Toolo ; and suppose he should be enjoying a triumphant laugh at the world, as Daniel Defoe no doubt did in his time, and certainly would have done in the earlier days of the present writer, who experienced a bitter dis- illusion on learning that the History of the Plague was a work of fiction. Can it be that, like the late Mr. Robson, we have

"Let into our parlour, neat and tidy, A traveller who isn't bond jide?"

or is this book a genuine record of travel? Even should the author decline to solve the problem, contenting himself in the one case with laughing at us, or in the other, with silent waiting for the confirmation which time must bring, we shall not have to wait very long. An expedition to explore New Guinea is among the

• 11-mukrings in the Interior of New Guinea. By Captain J. A. Lawson. London: Chapman and Hall.

latest announcements of scientific enterprise, and when it has taken place and the results are before us, Captain Lawson will either have had his laugh out, or he will enjoy the satisfaction of uttering that sentence in which is supposed to lurk the very essence of aggra- vation,—" I told you so."

He tells us wonderful things, in a curious, dry, unemphatic way,.

with little bits of emotion and piety thrown in here and there unaffectedly, which, if they be art, conceal its artfulness but he fails in impressing us with deep sympathy for his sufferings and those of his men ; and a very big tiger story indeed—his tigers are bigger than the Bengal brutes—does not frighten us at all, though it comprises every element of the terrible. A Homeric combat with natives, in which Captain. Lawson seizes an axe, brings the back part of it down upon a miscreant's head with such force that he scatters his skull and

brains in every direction, then draws his revolver, shoots three- fellows down in as many seconds, and sends the others (eighty or a hundred) "flying like a flock of sheep," is a trifling incident ofhis wanderings in New Guinea. He has discovered the largest mountain and the smallest parrot in the world ;.

he has been forced to descend from an elevation of only 25,314 feet by incipient suffocation ; he has pitted two scorpions against each other, and both have succumbed in the duel, like the Kilkenny cats. He has ' collected ' a black- beetle five inches and a half long, by three broad, with horns two inches long ; and butterflies so gorgeous, that Mr. Wallace's beauties are pale and ineffectual in comparison ; he has discovered

a lake like an inland sea, out of which he has taken fish of uncanny appearance, twelve feet in length ; he has been disturbed in his much-needed slumber by pimply-backed frogs, which, "when on shore and perched up ready for a leap, looked like- great boulder-stones, many of them exceeding in size a .large puppy ;'' he has seen a party of apes resolve upon the discomfiture-

of a crocodile, and one of them carry the resolution into effect by suddenly and effectively poking out the saurian's watchful eye with a sharp stick ; and be has found a Papuan native to be

"always strictly truthful." He has discovered a volcano- 3,117 feet high, forming part of a range whose highest point is 1,597 feet above the level of the lake (which he has named Lake Alexandrine, in honour of the Queen), and 16,743 feet above the sea, but apologises for being impressed by the spectacle-

which it presented, which was enhanced by "a great deal of thunder, and extremely vivid lightning," and by the trifling addi- tion of "six or seven meteors shooting through the southern por- tion of the heavens ":—

" The glowing summit, with its dull red light, had a strange effect upon me," says the author, "filling my soul with an awe that almost. amounted to dread. No doubt the weak state of my body had much to do with this feeling, but I am always greatly impressed at the sight- of any remarkable phenomenon. It may be thought that it is absurd on my part to record such a trifle 118 this, but it should also be re- membered that I was in the midst of a wild, uninhabited land, with five followers only ; and under such circumstances, a marvellous sight is apt. to have a singular effect upon the mind."

It is difficult to read such a passage as that, and not to suspect that Captain Lawson is poking his fun at us ; or to follow the explorers through their wonderful journeys, and find them always- well provided with necessaries, though they are all but smothered' in swamps, constantly swimming rivers, and plunging through jungle ; of course have no baggage-animal of any description, and' are seemingly not put to inconvenience by the distribution of the respective loads of Toolo and Dunang, when those intelligent foreigners fall victims to the hazards of the situation,—without similar suspicion. Great fissures between mountains, thickly populated with resplendently-coloured serpents, one of them, at least, being seven or eight feet long and thicker than a man's leg ; a snake forty feet long, gracefully festooned on a branch ; trees- which reduce the majestic forest lords of Mariposa and Calaveras County to insignificance, are convincing, in comparison with the opportune coil of rope which turns up when it is wanted to tie the exploring party together, Alpine fashion, and the lively leeches'

to be had close by the " camp " when they were required' for application to Captain Lawson's ribs, after he had been tossed' "at least thirty feet" by a buffalo, a beast we should hardly have- expected to hear of in New Guinea. We are glad to hear of him, however,—he is of the Indian species, of course,—and to think that it will be some time before tourists' hunting-parties can be organised to persecute him there.

From Houtree, the native village at which the "merchant cap- tain," who brought Captain Lawson from Sydney to New Guinea; deposited him, to the point at which he discovered the splendid. chain of mountains which he has named the Papuan Ghauta, the narrative reads very like an African-travel record, with the park- like country and the salt-marshes, the deer, the crocodiles, and the vultures. But wonders begin with the Papuan Ghauts ; at a height of 4,000 feet grow multitudes of flowers of indescribable beauty, nor are they dltogether wanting at 11,000. Daisies as big as sun- flowers are "very common," and a bulbous plant abounds whose flower is described as follows :—

"It was the shape of a narcissus, nine inches in diameter' and of a lily-white colour, spotted with deep crimson. It gave forth a delightful odour, which was so powerful, that one's hands would retain the per- fume of it for hours after the plant had been handled. The leaves were six or seven feet in length and one in breadth, and so tough that I found it impossible to break one of them in two. The bulb was as large as a man's head ; the height of the plant nine or ten feet, the flower standing several feet above the leaves. Clustering round the foot of the flower-stalk, amongst the leaves, was a large quantity of soft white down which I have proved by comparison to be of the same kind as that used by the bird of paradise to line its nest, so that if this bird does not actually alight on the ground, it comes to within a few inches of it."

What would the old romancers have said to that bit of circum- stantiality, to the notion of any one's analysing the lining of the nest that was

Woven of the sunshine, And the fragrance of the spice?"

What will the expedition tell us of the mountain 11,000 feet above the level of the sea, with a dense white mist hanging about it, and appropriately named by Captain Lawson "Misty Mount?" After the Papuan Gliauts everything is increasingly wonderful, so that we are prepared for Mount Vulcan, and even for its neighbours, concerning which we quote the author's facts and figures :—

" Ten miles west by south of Mount Vulcan was a singular detached mountain of pyramidal shape, and 15,091 feet high. I bestowed upon

it the appellation of the -Outpost,' from its peculiar position Upon rounding it, we discovered another peak of far greater height situated behind a wall-like ridge, and distant about twenty-five or thirty miles."

Then, after a night's halt at its base, comes the ascent of the second mountain :-

'1 calculated that it was 30,000 feet high, it proved to be 32,783 feet above the sea-level, or 30,901 feet above the surrounding country. It is by far the highest mountain known. High mountains,

as a rule, rise from elevated or table-land, and they are often loss than one-half their maximum height above the sea ; but it is not so with

Mount Hercules, as I named it. For the plains in its neighbourhood are less than 2,000 feet above the sea, and many of the valleys are several hundred feet lower than the plains; so that it rises to the full grandeur of its height, dwarfing the chains of mountains that run along its southern side, and frowning over the level country to the northward, like the watch-tower of some hugo giant. A thick forest runs round the eastern and northern sides of its base, and a short distance up the slopes. This I designated the forest of Hercules."

After the wonderful mountains come the beautiful rivers. Captain Lawson calls them respectively the Arrow, the Royal, and the Gladstone,—" after the premier of that name," he quaintly adds ;—another lake besides the Alexandrina, which he calls Buffalo Lake (here he lacks originality), and a cascade which may show up beside Dr. Livingstone's discoveries on the Zambesi.

These falls occur in the course of the Royal, and "a mass of water, 300 yards in width, rolls over the precipice into a fearful gulf below, raising a misty cloud of spray many hundred feet in height. Not a single rock or islet breaks the enormous body of water, but it falls in one magnificent sheet the great depth of 179 feet." The plain beyond the river at this point is bounded by a mountain-chain, whose peaks are "at least 5,000 feet high."

The charm of this strange narrative is very great. If New Guinea, according to Captain Lawson, be not a mirage, or such a dream as the hasheesh-eater summons up at will, it must be an earthly paradise, slightly tempered by natives, serpents, and " yagi" spiders.