From the Black Sea through Persia and India. By Edwin
Lord Weekes. (Osgood, Mcllvaine, and Co.) —Mr. Weekes and his party, after various disappointments necessitating changes of plan, journeyed from Trehizond through Kurdistan into Persia. We must pass over his Persian experiences, only mentioning the warm terms in which he speaks of the mission at Ispahan, and the opinion which he quotes from Sir J. D. Tholosan, who has been physician to the Shah for over thirty years, that the original home of cholera is not India, but Samarkand. From Ispahan the travellers made for Shiraz, and from Shiraz to Bushire, where they took ateamer for Kurrachee. And now begins what is to an Englishman the most interesting part of the book,—what Mr. Weekes saw in India. His views are disinterested ; he is free from the jealousy which distempers most Continental judgments on the subject. He does not bore his readers with his opinions. For the most part he is concerned with the experiences proper to a traveller. His accounts of the native princes, of their state and their personal bearing, are highly picturesque. But he has some- thing to say about the British Raj. " One cannot but carry away the impression that India is a well-governed country, and that much of the credit is due to the men chosen to fill the higher offices and to the superior equipment of those whose position is gained through competition." There is no extravagance in this language; but it is all the more weighty for that, and for the fact that the writer does not by any means keep silence when he sees a fault.
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