The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, October 1879Various
History
The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, October 1879
Various
Arts -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals; Political science -- Periodicals
As Mrs. Burton supplemented the "Unexplored Syria" of her husband and
the late C. F. Tyrwhitt Drake with her own more personal but none the
less interesting "Inner Life of Syria," so she has now embodied her own
impression of the various localities which she and Captain Burton have
visited during the last few years in a pleasant book entitled, _A. E.
I.: Arabia, Egypt, and India_ (London: W. Mullan & Son, 1879). Mrs.
Burton's pages are eminently readable, her powers of observation are
keen, and her descriptions always fresh and vivid. If the spots she
writes about have been often before depicted by pen and pencil, she yet
finds something new to say, and some interesting and little-known
historical incident to narrate, concerning them. The latter part of the
book, containing a history and description of the old Portuguese
settlement of Goa, and a minutely-detailed account of the life and works
of St. Francis Xavier, the Apostle of the Indies, will be new to most
readers and read with interest by all. The book is one which may be
taken up at any moment with the certainty of finding something to amuse,
instruct, or furnish food for earnest thought.
* * * * *
_Egypt to Palestine_, by S. C. Bartlett, though bearing the name and
address of a London publisher (Sampson Low, Marston, & Co.) on the
title-page, is evidently the production of an American firm, the name of
which, indeed, appears on some of the maps. The book is well got up, and
as a description of the localities, their antiquities and history, is
equal to the average of such publications. It is, however, entirely
composed of materials collected from the works of other authors, taken
often without acknowledgment, and is profusely illustrated by pictures
and maps copied from other works, the sources of which are never
acknowledged at all. The only passages at all original in the work are
those which describe Mr. Bartlett's own journey, the highest interest of
which consists in an occasional enumeration of the hymns he and his
companions sang to the Arabs (cf. p. 193), and which would have much the
same effect on the Tiyahah as the performances of the howling dervishes
have upon an American tourist.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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