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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[MAY, 1877.
Mr. Fergusson is well able to defend him- self when he requires it, but we cannot refrain from noticing with dissent Mr. Carr Stephen's remark that Mr. Fergusson las committed himself to statements, about the doings of British officials at Dehli, which cannot be accepted. We consider Mr. Fergusson has been astonishingly moderate in his denouncement of European Vandallism. The ignorant destroyer has done his worst there, to the eternal disgrace of the British reputation for taste. Without going further efield, the first thing one sees on entering Dehli by railway is a mutilation of the walls of the Forty--the walls which prompted the warm admiration of Heber,-in order that one or two honey. combed guns may have a clear sweep across the bridge. In respect to these barbarities the mouths of state officials are shut, and it becomes indispensable that independent writers like Mr. Fergusson should speak the truth, while there is an enlightened government, both here and at home, able and willing to put down these acts of ruthless destruction.
KASHMIR AND KASHGAR: & Narrative of the Journey of
the Embassy of Kashgar in 1873-74. By H. W. BELLEW, C.8.I., Surgeon-Major, Bengal Staff Corps (sic in orig.), author of Journal of a Mission to Kandahar
in 1857-58, &c., &c. London: Trübner & Co. TEE NORTHERN BARRIER OP INDIA : & popular account of the Jummoo and Kashmir Territories. By FREDE RICK DREW, Assoc. of the Royal School of Mines, Assistant Master of Eton College, formerly of the Maha. raja of Kashmir's service. London: Edward Stanford.
The two works noted above deal with the same region, but are of very different pretensions and character. Dr. Bellew is an almost official writer, who has already related the adventures of two important Missions, has distinguished himself in the philology of Khurasan and Mekrån, and been highly honoured by the Government he serves. It would be natural to expect from his powers, experience, and opportunities & work which should be a vade-mecum to future travellers and inquirers. The hope would be grievously disappointed by the volume before ns. It contains no map (a sine qud non of a good book of travels), though the author might surely have made use of the researches of his comrades, Captains Trotter and Biddulph and Colonel Gordon. It has no illus
trations, though the Mission included draughts- · men and photographers; and it has no index.
The book may, for the purpose of review, be divided into two parts,--the itinerary of the Mission, and the author's ethnological opinions and bistorical researches. The former may be briefly dismissed, as the most part of it furnishes but littlo information not already before the public, and Dr. Bellew himself appears to think that the
interchange of the regulation civilities between Raja, Resident, and Envoy at Srinagar are quite as worthy of note as any other event of their travels. The other portion, however, requires some notice.
It is, in the first place, very hard upon the 19th century that its now declining days should be insulted with a rechauffé of the wildest dreams of Tod and Wilford; with nonsense about the "pure Caucasian, the representative of the original Saka, Sui, or Sacæ who were pushed up from the plains by kindred tribes of the Yuchi, Getæ, Jatta, or Goth"! who, according to our author, "in the west transplanted to the soil of their adoption, as in Gothland, Jutland, England, Saxony, &c. (Saxony from Saka!] the names of their colonizing tribes; and in the south," to cut a long story short, christened Banaras Kist, after Kashghår, Herat after Yårkand, and Katak in Orissa after an elder sister in Turkestån! At least so Dr. Bellew ventures to conclude " from the similarity of the names, and the historical record of the emigration," document about which he is provoking enough to give us no further information. His researches, however, into the history of the country in times rather more within the ken of modern man are apparently reliable, and would be useful if they were comfortably sorted out into an appendix. But they are, throughout the work, intermixed with the itinerary, as never were victuals in a pie; so that the bewildered reader emerges from the flockings and fightings of the children of Chinghiz Khân into the festive hall of the Maharaja of Kasmir, or the crowded camp of the Mission, whence, at the sight of some wayside monument, the doctor drags him off again into the civil troubles of the “Khitay" and "Mughol." It would perhaps be too much to ask for systematic orthography in such a work, -at any rate it would be fruitless, and it is something that Dr. Bellew no longer calls the race of the Prophet “Saggids."
In wading through this confused medley of travel, history, and speculation we have been much assisted by Mr. Drew's work. It is, and pretends to be, no more than a useful manual of the dominions of the house of Jamu; but it has been very carefully and systematically compiled, has a good map and index, and a number of illustrations, some of which are beautiful, especially the pretty centre-piece on the cover (reappearing in black and white on p. xii.), and all clear. Some of the modest outlines of mountain scenery could, one would think, almost be used as maps; and the whole work is of a sort most valuable to the traveller and student.
W. F. S.
