o< MONTHLY, m 
Vol. XIV] 
COLOMBO, APKIL ist, 1895. 
[No. 10. 
IK TROPICAL L.ims.* 
- \ E have now been able to read 
W \A\ V Aw A I iu "' a,lllolate Mr. Sinclair's 
little volume of 190 pages, 
and our first impression of 
its attractive, interesting 
character, has only been 
deepened ; for, truly, there 
is not a dull page from first 
to last. It is dedicated to "the dear memory of 
Dr. William Alexander, for 37 years the warm and 
steadfast friend of the author," and no one, we feel 
sure, would have more enjoyed this sketch of tropical 
travel, or more lovingly reviewed it, than the 
accomplished writer of "Johnnie Gibb of Gushat- 
neuk," and editor of one of the best-known of 
Scottish newspapers whose death a few years ago 
was so widely regretted. The book is of interest 
to the traveller, the botanist, and especially the 
tropical planter; but quite as much also to the 
stay-at-home intelligent reader who wants to get 
a glimpse of distant and little-known lands as 
seen" by the latest, and by no means least obser- 
vant visitor, and to contrast his graphic pencil- 
sketches of Peru, its people, industries, topograhy 
and vegetation with the glimpses afforded of 
.some of our best known West Indian islands, and 
still more with the picture drawn of more familiar 
ground in the first of Cr own Colonies in the 
East. There .are illustrations galore— horn the 
frontispiece which reveals the size and luxuriance 
of cacao walks in Trinidad, to the miniature 
page-map «>t Ceylon studded all round with tiny 
portraits from photographs of some 4i» to SO living 
•In Tropical Lands: Recent Travels to the sources 
of the Amazon, the West Indian Islands and Ceylon, 
by Arthur Sinclair, Fellow of the Boyal Colonial 
Institute, itc. — Aberdeen : D. Wyllie & Son ; Edin- 
burgh : John Mi nzies iVr Co. ; London: Simpkin, M.u- 
bhall A Co.; Ceylon A. M. it J. Ferguson. liSUS. 
and dead local celebrities — or at any rate colonists 
— most of them friends of the author including 
Messrs. R. 15. Tytler, A. Brown, A. M., W. and 
J. Ferguson, H. L. Forbes, S. Le Cocq, G. M. 
Ballardie, A. T. Itettie, H. Blacklaw, Vollar, 
Milne, Greig, Fraser, Smith, Stuart, Murray, 
Mitchell, Bagra, Taylor, Hedges, Glenny, Ware- 
house, &Ci, &C,, besides those of two Governors, 
Sir James LongdBn and Sir Arthur Havelock. 
More attractive are some of the reproductions in 
engravings of exquisite orchids, typical of the 
wayside in Panama and Guayaquil, or on the 
banks of the Perene, or again common on the 
" Pampa Hermosa," Peru. The ordinary flowering 
plants found on the hills and plains of that bota- 
nically most interesting of South American 
States are profusely depicted as well as graphi- 
cally described ; while of the native Indians. Lima, 
a fair Limena and other characteristic subjects 
we have also very good engravings. We miss, 
indeed, a list of the illustrations to supplement 
the "Contents" which follows the Preface, and 
the useful Index which closes the book ; and be- 
fore we have done with fault-finding) we may 
s.iy further that the Sketch-Map shewing the 
author's route through Peru is deficient in 
not giving the names of several [daces 
mentioned in the letter press, although the 
reader can easily pencil in these additional 
names for himself. 
But having said so much for the illustrations, 
and by way of introduction, we turn to the 
book itself. In his "prefatory note" Mr. Sin- 
clair makes due acknowledgment to the Peru- 
vian Corporation's representative at Lima, to his 
fellow-travellers Messrs. A. Boss and Clark, to 
Sir Walter Hely- Hutchinson while Governor of 
Grenada — who seems to have been specially cour- 
teous and attentive to Messrs. Boss and Sinclair 
on visiting Grenada — and to Mr. Hart of the 
Trinidad Cardens. The opening chapter is headed 
