Recollections of Travels Abroad. By A. J. Duffield. With Map.
(Remington.)—This is a very interesting book, deserving a much fuller notice than space enables us to give it. Mr. Duffield is a keen observer of men and men's ways, and in the course of his travels about the world, has seen and understood many things which very few wanderers have either the intellectual vision to see, or the requisite experience and reflective power to understand. He writes, moreover, in a style which is his own, and there is a flavour of amiable cynicism about his book that is not without its attraction. The Western and Northern Republics of South America and the Australasian Colonies have been his chief hunting- grounds. His conclusion is that in these democratic communities political justice and morality are being rapidly replaced by pure selfishness and shameless corruption and intrigue. The Peruvian Indian was hospitable, industrious, civilised in the best sense of the word, and unaffectedly pious. Of the various kinds of Spanish ruffians who destroyed him, the worst were the priests, who are worse now than they ever were. The inability of the author to give the proofs of this position " arises solely from the indelicacy, obscenity, and general satanic quality " of the evidence. But "horrible and hateful as the treatment was of the aboriginals in Spanish Colonies," the treatment of Australian natives has been still more horrible, and much worse in the non-convict than in the convict Colonies. Facts are given in support of these statements which cannot be passed over, but which in England, where any- thing like free criticism of Colonial matters appears to be im- possible, are ignored. The treatment of immigrant women in Australian towns is, according to Mr. Duffield, so shameful and horrible that it cannot be specified. Clearly there is a reverse to the medal of which the author of " Oceana " has depicted the side he saw in such glowing colours. Altogether, the view taken of extra-European European-descended humanity is far from cheerful ; but it is that of a man of experience, and is evidently sincere. The first chapter, "At Sea with a Dushenka " (the Russian word for " darling "), shows that Mr. Duffield is no cynic at heart, but a kindly satirist, able to paint with no little humorous power the various moods of a pretty but empty-headed woman.
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