CURRENT LITERATURE.
Sunny Lands and Seas : a Voyage in the SS. Ceylon.' By Hugh Wilkinson. (John Murray.)—The yachts that circumnavigate the globe are doubtless among the luxuries of advanced civilisation. But the arrangement has its " seamy " side, and we see it in such a book as this. Hero is a gentleman who spends five months in voyaging from " China to Peru," writes his experiences to his friends—a blame- less, and even laudable act—and then is led away by their polite acknowledgments to publish a bulky volume. Is every such voyage— and they are sure to be multiplied—to produce a crop of these super- ficial notes of travel ? Of all tiresome people, on paper and in talk, the worst are those who lay down the law about strange men and cities, because they have paid them a flying visit. But Mr. Wilkin- son is worse than tiresome. He writes the moat utter fallacies about Missionaries and native populations, because he spent a week or so among the Islands of the Pacific. It must be either folly or spite that makes him attribute to the preachers of religion the decay due to the avarice and profligacy of traders and adventurers and sailors. The condition and prospects of the South-Sea paradises are bad enough. Does Mr. Wilkinson think they would have been better, if the Mis- sionaries had left the traders and adventurers entirely to themselves ? Which does be think the better civilised, Bishop Patteson, or the sea- captain who fires on a native village because it will not send out its young girls for prostitution ?
Previous page
