To have known India in the time of the Mutiny,
and South Africa during the diamond fever of 1868, to have taught Tibetan nuns to dance the Highland fling, to have met Buckle and Glennie in Egypt, to have scored off the Shah of Persia, is the lot of few men : and we must accept Mr. Gray's apology for not having put pen to paper earlier to tell us of his multi- tudinous voyages and adventures, on the score that he has been too busy. Now at the magnificent age of eighty-nine he gives us his first, and a very enthralling, book. There is an engaging simplicity and a quiet humour in his
style which is both personal and pleasing. Mr. Gray obviously had all his generation's forthrightness, its careless- ness of infidel susceptibilities, its vigour, and he saw the world, quite literally from Java to Peru, as any true Victorian gentleman of fortune must have seen it. That is what makes the book of so much value as a historical as well as a personal document. Our particular thanks are due to Mr. Gray for
the inclusion in his book of a really magnificent photograph of Colonel Alexander Gardner, an eccentric American turned Mohammedan, in the service of Rangit Singh. Seated in grim state, clothed in a Suit of tartan, with a plumed tartan turban on his head, and a fierce eye gleaming above his rather wild moustaches and whiskery beard, sword in hand, the Colonel is a figure such as Thackeray would have loved to invent.
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