appear that Kansas still presents great inducements for the emigrant who does not desire to go quite into the deeps of the primitive wilderness. 'A man,' he says, 'can buy outright in Kansas a farm for a year's rent in the East, and in less than ten years he can make a good living for himself and his family. The Yosemite Valley is written of with great enthusiasm as a new land of Goshen, and to California ample justice is done. The chapter on Canada and its unlimited wheat-fields demands all the attention it is likely to receive. We wish we could have secured full space to do justice to it. Social questions, such as the condition of the Chinaman in America and the possibilities of the Irish, are carefully treated. The book is instructive even as regards the oft-trodden ground it goes over, it is full of interest respecting the fields that have more recently been opened up, and it goes without saying that Dr. Russell is uniformly bright and readable, and not seldom humorous and brilliant in portrait and anecdote. Pioneering in the Far East. BY LUDVIG VERNER HELMS. W. H. Allen and Co. This handsome-looking volume embraces a tolerably comprehensive range of travel. Besides describing a lengthy sojourn in Borneo, Mr. Helms details his journeys to California in 1849, and to the White Sea in 1878. Business appears chiefly to have taken him abroad, and he gave much time to exploring the mineral wealth of the various localities visited. The author writes in a modest strain, and disclaims all qualifications to be a scientific recorder of the wonders of the Eastern Archipelago Criticism from this aspect of the question is therefore disarmed; but we may add that Mr. Helms has a truly observant eye, and that he relates what he has seen in an entertaining manner. He observes that the future of Borneo is just now forcing itself anew upon the consideration of the English people. It has certainly had a strange history in the past, and promises to have a notable one in the future. He therefore deals somewhat fully with the early efforts made to develop the north-west of Borneo, and deduces from the whole the necessary lessons of warning and encouragement. This great island, which is inferior only to Australia, or perhaps to New Guinea, in extent, ought certainly at some distant period to become one of the most important countries of the far East. Its vast resources only need development, and its numerous rivers, rising in the centre of the island, are ready to serve as natural highways for the transport of the mineral and vegetable products, which have as yet been only partially exploited.' Mr. Helms traces in a very interesting fashion the career of Sir James Brooke, the famous Rajah of Sarawak, showing what great things he accomplished during his rule. We shall not go into the causes of the unfortunate affair which led to the inquiry into the Rajah's conduct; but the author sheds much light upon them. Having shared the intimacy of Rajah Brooke, Mr. Helms holds that his whole life will stand out as great and heroic; and he further observes that it has been his object, while doing full justice to Sir James Brooke, to deal fairly also with the memory of his gallant nephew, Captain Brooke, who no less devoted his life and sacrificed his fortunes to the cause of civilizing Borneo. There is a very thrilling account of the terrible incidents which occurred at the capture of Sarawak by the Chinese and its recapture by the Borneo Company. The author is in agreement with some other travellers, when he remarks that, whatever the faults of the Chinese, they are unrivalled as pioneers in tropical countries, while in trade they are valuable as mediums between the white man and the savage. Some of the illustrations to this work are hard and crude. Tunis: the Land and the People. HESSE-WARTEGG. By the CHEVALIER DE Chatto and Windus. This work will be especially acceptable just now, when Tunis is once more a source of difficulty in European politics. It is astonishing that some drastic measures are not adopted by France for the improvement and permanent pacification of this dependency. For centuries, as the author remarks, the history of Tunis has been an uninterrupted series of struggles, wars, palace intrigues, murderous deeds, and piratical cruises. And so it must be till the end of the chapter, if the Tunisians are left to manage their own affairs. The whole state is rotten, and those who have it in their power to achieve reforms are not likely to do so, seeing that such reforms are diametrically opposed to their own interests. 'In Tunis,' says the Chevalier de Hesse-Wartegg,' we still see a part of this purely genuine Orient, a bulwark of the middle ages reaching dark and threatening into modern times. The French occupation has only now battered a breach, and her influence may in time succeed, perhaps, in bringing back to the Regency the old prosperity which it enjoyed many centuries ago when still a Roman province.' Little has been written recently of the country, and it is in consideration of this fact that our author has complied with repeated requests by publishing the result of his observations there. Tunis is very rich in archæological curiosities, but as these have frequently been described, the Chevalier has touched upon them only lightly, reserving himself for those topics of more general interest, the present condition of the country, its towns, districts, and people. The work is very varied, is not too long, and it is excellently produced and illustrated. Religious intolerance appears to reach its very highest pitch in Tunis. Woe to the Christian who only contemplates a mosque. The author himself witnessed a fanatic throw vitriol over a German lady while she was sketching a group of houses, he labouring under the impression that she was drawing a mosque. ization. There are only five regiments of The cavalry is only to be found on paper. colonels and twenty men without horses. but two or three thousand men, and the pay of these is drained from them by their superiors. The administration of the country is in the hands of The army is a curious organ- the Ministry and twenty-one district governors, or Caids, who again appoint deputies, or Caliphs. These high functionaries are wholly neg. lectful of their duties, except that of the collection of taxes, in which they exhibit a remarkable punctuality and perseverance. It is incredible,' observes the Chevalier, to what degree this poor people, reduced by epidemics, emigration, and starvation, numbering in all 1,500,000, is oppressed and drained. The Mamelukes at the head of the Government exhibited a genius for inventing new taxes which would have done credit to a Yankee.' The author looks with hope to the French to bring relief to the people, and the blessings of civilization. His work will be found both interesting and valuable for the information which it conveys. Palestine Explored. By the Rev. JAMES NEIL, M.A., Author of Palestine Repeopled,' &c. J. Nisbet and Co. This is not so much a record of the exploration of Palestine as a land, as an account of the people, together with a survey of the social and religious life of the country. Mr. Neil was formerly incumbent of Christ Church, Jerusalem, and he has written this little work chiefly with a view to the prevailing manners, customs, rites, and colloquial expressions of its people, which throw light on the figurative language of the Bible. It is obvious that when such questions as these are intelligently dealt with, as they are by our author, the information conveyed must be both valuable and interesting to the general reader. But in a geographical sense Mr. Neil is a very trustworthy guide, for during a three years' residence in Palestine he was called upon to traverse the country in many directions. The management of landed property in various districts afforded him very special facilities for forming a close acquaintance with its natural features and modern life. Intimate relations with its various races, and more particularly with native Jews, amongst whom Hebrew is still a spoken language, gave further help. But, as Mr. Neil justly observes, not only are many questions of topography of comparatively minor value to the Biblical student, even when perfectly clear, but such is the state of emptiness, ignorance, wasting, and general decay into which the country has fallen for upwards of a thousand years, that a perfect identification of most scriptural sites is scarcely possible. But in the case of the manners, customs, productions, great natural features, and a large part of the language of the people, these through ages have survived unaltered, and may be seen and heard to-day in Emmanuel's Land the same in all essentials as they were seen and heard by David three thousand years ago. Ruin has been able to make but little havoc in these living, divinely preserved commentaries on the Written Word.' The author is far from insensible to the advantage derived from the invaluable aid of the Palestine Exploration Fund. The greater part of the Ordnance Survey of Western Palestine, which, to the Biblical student is by far the most important scientific work of this scientific age, was accomplished during the period of the author's residence at Jerusalem, and he has watched its progress throughout.' Mr. Neil does well to call the attention of the Old Testament Revisers to some important renderings suggested in the course of his work. After going through this little volume we can confidently say that there is a distinctive place for it, notwithstanding all that has recently been written upon Palestine. There are many side-lights to be met with here upon Scripture history as affecting the Holy Land that are not to be found elsewhere. Seven editions of his previous work may well have encouraged the author to undertake this new venture. Wanderings South and East. By WALTER COOTE, F.R.G.S. With Two Maps and Forty-seven Engravings, executed under the Direction of EDWARD WHYMPER, from Sketches by the Author. Sampson Low and Co. 6 Mr. Coote describes a wide circle; so wide, indeed, that one is surprised that he has managed to compress into one volume the results of such extensive observation and experience. He begins his narrative with Australia, because, as he says in his preface, that country is the true Southern Land. From this he passes to the islands of the Pacific, and thence to 'far Cathay' and still farther Japan. His last division is devoted to the countries of Spanish origin in South America, and these, although generally recognized as belonging to the Western World, may, after all, by a traveller in Australia and the Orient, be considered as the legitimate Ultima Thule of his Wanderings South and East.' There is thus some sense of miscellaneity imparted to the book from the extent of ground covered and the very excess of material, and a sense of sudden contrast will now and then be felt in passing from chapter to chapter. After the perusal of such special works as those of Reed and Bird on Japan, of Archdeacon Gray and Thomson on China, and Miss Gordon Cumming on Fiji, it could hardly be expected that Mr. Coote would be successful in adding much that is new to our knowledge of these places; but he writes with not a little freshness, and his faculty of selection and grouping greatly aids him. His book is readable and interesting, and in some of its chapters really presents substantive additions to our stock of facts. Particularly is this the case with regard to Australia-more especially Queensland, that rising colony, which promises soon to outstrip in not a few respects some of its older rivals. But we had fancied that the native question had been put in a far more satisfactory condition than it seems to be. Mr. Coote assures us that nothing as yet brought before the English public regarding this matter comes near the real enormous truth. If,' he says, 'we have heard at home of white settlers shooting down natives (" potting blacks is their grimly facetious word for it), in mere wanton sport by scores, they have really shot them down in such manner by hundreds; and if tales have reached us of the cruelty of the bush police, and the wholesale wiping out of tribes for trivial causes, or for no cause at all, such tales are within the mark, and may be capped 32 NO. CL. with true stories of such massacres as are only paralleled in the history of the Spaniards in Peru.' So that there is still room for the efforts of philanthropists to protect the black men in our own possessions, and good ground to urge that when we rail at America for her conduct towards the Red men, and the injustice of the mode of treating Reservations," we may be calling attention to the mote that is in our neighbour's eye, while we are altogether forgetting the beam that is in our own. With regard to Norfolk Island, Mr. Coote is specially interesting, giving us admirable glimpses of the community under Mr. Nobbs, and the work of the Melanesian Mission, still happily associated with the revered name of Selwyn; and also pathetic reminiscences of the woful times of the Criminal Inferno in that island, suggested by grim momentoes that still remain. Mr. Coote has given attention to the scientific interest connected with the Pacific Islands, and his accounts of the volcanoes there are very excellent, showing not a little descriptive power. Mr. Coote also takes up the question of the attacks of islanders on white crews, and urges that they have not been sufficiently punished, and because of this that things are daily going from bad to worse. He urges that the matter demands the most serious attention of the imperial government—as we believe it does. The freshest portion of the book, after the chapters to which we have more fully referred, is that on South America, the picture of peaceful Chile, with its plodding peasants and pleasant little farms, being clear and vivid, and the whole section on Brazil being not only well written, but condensing into small compass what might have been spun out to fill a volume. The capabilities of Brazil as a coffee-producing country are faithfully celebrated. On the whole, Mr. Coote's volume may be recommended as full of information, and this even when going over ground that has been made tolerably familiar. The engravings have been carefully executed, and do much to help the reader. There is a good track-map, and the publishers have not failed to make it in every respect a very beautiful book. POLITICS, SCIENCE, AND ART. England's Policy: its Traditions and Problems. By LEWIS SERGEANT. Edinburgh: Macniven and Wallace. The writer of this work has discharged faithfully and well a task of some degree of novelty. He has traced the growth and progress of the principles of foreign policy which have come to govern the relations of England with other countries, as they have been developed out of the conflict of tendencies at the different epochs of the national history. For throughout its course the forces that have been at work have often been antagonistic to each other and mutually exclusive. It is only as the great development of the national intelligence has at last found expression in the current politics of the hour, and come to determine their character and objects that the real purpose of Englishmen has |