A Scamper to Sebastopol and Jerusalem in 1867. By James
Creagh. (Bentley.)—Mr. Croagh's scamper was not so hurried but that he con- trived to make a good many observations on his way. And he seems to be a very shrewd observer. The route along which he " scampered " was one which is little followed by travellers. As far as Sebastopol it lay almost entirely overland; it took him through Russian and Austrian Poland, through Transylvania, across the Carpathians to Bucharest (which he spells in two different ways), and from Bucharest to Giurgevo. There Mr. Creagh crossed the Danube, and getting to Rustchuk, made his way by railway to Varna. From Odessa to Sebas- topol he went by steamer. He is loud in complaint of Polish, Tran- sylvanian, and Wallachian inns, all of them as extravagant in their charges as if they stood in the best quarter of Paris, and dirty,—but there seems to be no similitude which can adequately express their dirt. But he seems to have been even more struck by the beauty of the women than by the extortion and squalor of the inns. When he gets to Circassia he can hardly find words to express his admiration. He says:—
"Nowhere in the world will be found such ravishing and elegant beauty as God has given to the population who inhabit the isthmus that lies between the Black Sea and the Caspian, and the man accus- tomed to the confident manners and bold or affected expression of the women of our civilised Europe can only form an idea of these supple and beautifully formed children of Nature by imagining the colours of the most lovely English or German girl combined with the large, liquid eye of the Italian, the elegance and grace of the French, and the timidity and softness of the Greek."
These perfect beings have, however, certain notions about the chief good which the author is driven to account for by the theory that right and wrong depend upon the geographical position of the place of our birth. The chief good, they think, is to have plenty of jewels and fine clothes. Hence they aspire to a place in a Turkish harem. For a girl to marry one of her equals is looked upon much as the elopement of a nobleman'a daughter with a footman would be in this country. The Circassian men, indeed, do not seem agreeable ; Mr. Creagh describes them as ex- ceedingly brutal and insolent. Altogether, Mr. Creagh's is an interest- ing book, with more novelty than we might expect from its subject- matter, pleasantly written, though occasionally spoilt by the affectation of a cynical philosophy.
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