IN SEARCH OF A CLIMATE.* WITH a kindly consideration for
a hardly tried race of men, Mr. Nottage has done his best to save his future reviewers trouble by prefacing his book with several imaginary notices written by himself. His appreciation of his own work is really singularly just. As a critic he is severe—sometimes very severe—but it is hard to deny that the book which he has written deserves the severity with which he judges it. Since he appears to be so thoroughly alive to his shortcomings as an author, it is obviously superfluous to point them out to him in detail, and we may well avail ourselves of his forethought, and devote our attention only to the merits of his work. One word of warning, however, is owing to his possible readers. The title of the book is somewhat a misnomer ; Mr.Nottage's discursive remarks upon the various countries that he has visited are not likely to be of much use to invalids who are really in search of a climate.
• lot Search of a Climate. By C. G. Nottage. London : Sampeon Low, Idarston, and Co.
To any one who is interested in the Sandwich Islands, who contemplates a tour in California, or who intends to start as a hotel-keeper in the United States, Mr. Nottage is able to give some very useful information. He has a great deal to. say on the subject of hotels, and very little that is good of the ordinary American hotel. Possibly his hostile criticism of the latter should be largely discounted by the fact that he was, confessedly, not only an invalid, but also rather an exacting customer. Of another American institution, the- system of baggage-checking, by which the traveller hands over to an" Express Agency" all the responsibility and trouble- connected with his luggage, the author has the worst possible opinion. Bad as the luggage arrangements are upon our own railways at home, the "Express Agency," he declares, is in- finitely worse ; and he may well be excused for denouncing it as a delusion and a snare, seeing that the transportation of his baggage from San Francisco to Los Angeles, in California,. cost him considerably more than its journey from London to. San Francisco, including sundry wanderings to and fro in Egypt. Another grievance which the author ventilates is the scanty accommodation afforded to passengers upon our prin- cipal steamship lines, which, according to his account, contrast very unfavourably in that respect with the North-German Lloyd ships. But to turn from travellers' grumbles, of which our author is not sparing, to the question of climate. As no dates are given, it is rather difficult to estimate at their proper Value his experiences of the weather. From other evidence we gather that he arrived at Cairo, the first stage in his journey, in the latter part of November. The heat was moist and clammy; at night the mosquitoes were maddening, and myriads of hornets infested the rooms by day. Thinking. to escape, he fled up the Nile in a dahabeah. The heat was. more oppressive, the hornets and mosquitoes more numerous, and after a fortnight's trial, the author decided to abandon all ideas of Egypt, and continue his journey to Australia.. Here he seems to have arrived at some time about Christmas,—midsummer in the Antipodes. Expecting to. find intense heat, he experienced three days of " arctie cold "—in other words, the thermometer averaged about fifty degrees at noon. He was assured that this condition of affairs was altogether abnormal ; nevertheless he fled again, taking his passage from Sydney to Samoa. The weather in Samoa was "of the Colombo type, hot and moist ; " and as the place failed to present any other attractions, Mr. Nottage did not remain, but journeyed on to the Sandwich Islands. Here, at last, he found some- thing to praise. "The Islands certainly possess the most perfect climate I have ever known." This is what he said upon his first arrival ; after a stay of about a month— February, during which time the rain fell in torrents— he seems to have slightly modified his opinion. The ther- mometer, however, showed a more equable and satisfactory record than the barometer did, and the author is willing to admit the possibility of having encountered an exceptional rainfall, and of having done injustice to Honolulu by laying too much stress upon its extraordinary dampness. As far as one can gather, he exchanged the Sandwich Islands for Southern California some time in March. Here he found a bitterly cold wind out-of-doors, and a stifling atmosphere within the heated hotels. "It is now mid-day," he writes at Santa Barbara, "I, like others in the hotel, have a roaring
fire in my room, and yet the thermometer is under sixty degrees. Outside the verandah, ladiee are walking about in sealskins and sables, and the men with ulsters and turned- up collars." Moreover, the rain out-deluged even that which had fallen at Honolulu. It rained with a persistency that seemed to be our fate, and the papers were full of accounts of floods and damage done to property." From California, Mr..
Nottage journeyed on to Chicago, and thence to England. His experience he sums up after this fashion. Never had it.
been known to be so hot or so damp in Egypt as
during his visit. Never had such cold weather been known in Australia as when he was in Melbourne. Never had so much rain fallen as during his stay at Honolulu. Never had California experienced such a winter as when he was there. And never before had Chicago felt such a bitter cold as in the month of May.
"Never,"—that is to say, in the recollection of the oldest inhabitant. But the author has but little faith in that authority, and not so much faith in actual statistics that he should prefer their evidence to his own experience. The greater part of Mr. Nottage's book is devoted to a description of the Hawaian Islands. His account of the ancient and modern history of their inhabitants, of their legends, of their connection with civilisation, and of the recent revolution, is not only interesting, but also very well given. The volcano of Kilauea, which he visited, is in his opinion, almost all that Miss Bird painted it, though that lady's language was not stinted in the matter of superlatives. The author is rather disposed to deride the exaggerations of the enthusiasts ; still, one learns more from their outpourings than one does from the restrained speech of the unimagina- tive. The American lady quoted by Mr. Nottage, who ex- claimed, "Say, now, isn't that elegant?" does not convey, to our minds, a very vivid idea of the splendour of a spectacle which it is almost worth a journey to Hawaii to witness. Our author belongs rather to the unimaginative than to the enthusiastic class of travellers, and his book suffers in con- sequence.
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