Abstract
THE author of this book does not claim to have anything very new or striking to tell his readers. He has seen a good deal of India and China, and is content with reproducing, in a popular way, the impressions made upon him during his not very exciting sojourn in those countries. He has little to say about “the mild Hindu” or “the man of Han” that tends to make us think more highly of either. Mr. Bamford, like many English travellers, is apt to be impressed by the bad rather than by the good aspects of unfamiliar types of character; and some of his sweeping judgments would no doubt have been considerably modified if, in estimating the intellectual and moral qualities of Orientals, he had remembered more frequently and vividly than he has actually done, that thought and conduct in the East and West cannot always be fairly or wisely measured by the same standards. The book, however, has the merit of being written in a lively style, and the author's judgments, whether sound or unsound, invariably result from his own observation and reflection. Here is one of a good many suggestive anecdotes which brighten his pages: “Of what caste are you?” asked an Englishman of a native of India. “Oh,” replied the native, “I'm a Christian—I take brandy shrab, and get drunk like you.”
Turbans and Tails; or, Sketches in the Unromatic East.
By Alfred J. Bamford. (London: Sampson Low, 1888.)
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Our Book Shelf . Nature 38, 269 (1888). https://doi.org/10.1038/038269a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/038269a0