s to culture. She simply chronicles a tour made in her
husband's yacht, accompanied by two or three young children and as many
friends. But she has good sense, good temper and character, and what she
writes fully justifies her husband's prefatory statement, that "the
voyage would not have been undertaken, and assuredly it would never have
been completed, without the impulse derived from her perseverance and
determination." Unprepared by special study, and quite devoid of
science, she yet notes well, and interests us in, the animals, plants,
human occupants and natural phenomena generally of the countries
visited. And without any command or affectation of imagery or fine
language she is very graphic in her descriptions of sea and shore. Her
account of a visit to the great Hawaian volcano is one of the best we
have ever read, being simple, terse and vivid, without the overloading
with detail that spoils so many of the pen-pictures of the day.

The trip was made in eleven months of 1876-77. The route lay from
Chatham to Madeira, Rio, the river Plate, Valparaiso (through the
Straits of Magellan), the Society and Sandwich Islands, Yokohama,
Hong-Kong, Singapore, Ceylon, Aden, Alexandria, Malta, and so on back to
England. It thus threaded a large part of the tropical world, and we are
led to perceive a greater variety in tropical life and scenery than we
are in the habit of realizing. The rapidity of movement facilitated
this, as it brought the different points more closely together, and made
what there was of contrast more striking. Not that the movements of the
party were uniformly hurried either, for weeks were spent in Rio, the
Pampas, Chili and Japan, and sufficient stoppages made at many other
places. The slow passage through the stormy Straits makes us acquainted
with the savages of the Land of Fire and their picturesque country,
decidedly more damp than fiery. Japan was reached in the season of ice
and snow, and the author, wrapped in furs and ulsters, was puzzled by
the native contempt of the thermometer as shown in their wooden-walled
houses with paper partitions and the popular passion for the lightest
possible raiment. We join in her amazement at the proceedings, on a
frosty morning, of the propellers of her _jenrishka_--or, as it is
punningly termed, _pull-man-car_--who, compelled by law to wear their
clothes in town, deliberately stopped when they struck the country and
divested themselves of almost the last stit