A WANDERER'S TRAIL.*
THIS is one of the most remarkable records of travel which we have come across. Mr. Ridge;, while engaged in business in London, was filled with a great desire to see the world. One day a friend asked him, "Then why the devil don't you go ? and advised him to ship in the first tramp he could find bound for anywhere. The advice was taken, and in his early twenties the author, with ten pounds in his pocket, shipped in a cargo-boat for San Francisco. Thus began for him a very hard time on the Pacific coast. Ile tried many jobs— lumbering, strawberry-picking, serving in a cigar-store, and playing " super " in a country theatre. He was repeatedly reduced to his last dollar, and was driven to the many shifts of the out-of-work, such as riding free in freight trains, He went to Alaska and tried his hand at mining, but, finding it no good, returned to San Franciaco, and sailed as second mate on a tramp bound for Japan. They had a terrible passage across the Pacific, but once in Japan Mr. Ridges put his education to use and obtained a post as English professor. The chapters on Japan are curiously interesting, for- few Englishmen have seen the country from Mr. Ridger's stand- point. But the Wanderlust drove him onward— to Korea, • A Wanderer's Trait bent; Nithfut Record of Travel in Many Lands: By 4,..Lotla;ticlsor, r.e.o.e London; Grua Maude. - [105,
where he was shocked by the Japanese administration; among the battlefields of Manchuria; and then south down the Chinese coast to the Malay Peninsula. There he secured a job as purser in a ship bound for Boston, and reached the United States on a Christmas Day.
He returned to England for a couple of months, and then set out for South Africa, In Johannesburg he was first a storekeeper at the mines and then a worker underground. The picture of mining and social life in Johannesburg is perhaps the best thing in the hook—a record to which we do not remember any parallel. Then Le joined a labour-recruiting expedition to Lake Ngami, where he had many strange experiences. The expedition was grossly mismanaged, and his return across the Kalahari with the native recruits was a very difficult and perilous enterprise. After that he assisted in a bottle-store at Johannesburg ; but the East called him again, and he sailed from Durban to Bombay. The last chapters describe his wanderings down the Malabar coast of India, in Burma, in Indo-China, and once again in Japan. By this time Mr. Ridger was getting very weary in body and mind, and returned to England at the age of twenty-seven, having seen about three times as much of the life of the world as even well-travelled men see in a lifetime.
The charm of this volume is that Mr. Ridger saw things with the eyes of a cultivated and thoughtful man. Experiences which are usually shared only by those who have not the mind to reflect and compare fell in this case to one who could extract their full value. Mr. Ridger has an admirable gift of writing. He can observe closely and describe vividly, and his judgments are well wot th consideration. Humour, too, never deserts him; and the whole spirit of the book is sane and cheerful and courageous. Few young men can have ever passed through so strenuous a training, but we cannot believe that it was wasted. At the end he asks himself what he has to show for his years of travel, and we would answer, " This book," which is ample proof that he has learned from his strenuous education a sound philosophy and a shrewd know- ledge of human nature.
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