BOOKS OF THE DAY
Travel and Botanising, "On tho Eaves of the World," by Reginald Fairer, two volumes (London, Edward Arnold), is a work which will appeal alike to those who are interested in travel, oxploration, Asiatic religions, and ethnology, and to students of botany. The author's main object iu travelling through the mountainous country on the Chinese fringes of Tibet, in the province of Kansu, was to hunt for "Alpine" plants. He was accompanied by a skilled professional botanist, Mr. Furdom, and was fortunate in discovering many varieties of flowers and shrubs hitherto unknown to Europeans. Upon certain of his discoveries he writes with great enthusiasm. He tells how after tracking down rare plants in their wild mountain habitats, and noting their beauties in full summer bloom, the travellers duly marked them down, and inado return journeys of hundreds of miles later on in order to gather the seeds. Fascinating as aro Mr. Farrer's pen pictures and photographs of tho rare plants ho discovered, the chief interest of these delightful volumes will lie, for many of their readers, in the fresh and most enlightening descriptions Mr. Farrer gives of Chinese and Tibetan life and character. The travellers left Peking in March, 1914, and went on steadily with their work' of • collecting flowers and plants until the middle of NoyemBer' when they halted for tho winter at Lanchow, the capital of the vast province of Kansu. In tho following year they resumed their work, but the volumes now published cover only the first season spent in the marches of Chinese Tibet. • •'
To penetrate into such wild country— a country overrun with tho' Chinese banditti known as the "White Wolves., was a dangerous undertaking, but they found that.the official protection of the Chinese .Government, was to prove wonderfully" effective; _ Mr. Farrer is evidently a great admirer of Chinese civilisation, under which, despite local disturbances and the evil work of banditti such as:tlje White Wolves brotherhood, there is an all-pervading sense of order and law-abiding, and that without any military enforcement. Ho says: . • When once your contract is signed.the whole-machinery of the • Chinese Empiro is pledged to its fulfilment'without any further trouble on.your p.U't, even as it is pledged, to your own safeguard if you Jiold the proper passport. Nor is Ulis .1 special favour to tho foreigner: il is the invariable and immemorial rule of the Empire. Let a mulonmn bo cheeky, or an innkeeper recalcitrant, the headman of the village is responsible to the officer of the nearest small town, and he to the Mandarin of the district, and he lo the Governor of the local AVailed City,'and he to the Prefect, and he again to the Viceroy of the province, and the Viceroy of the province'to the Emperor on the ■ Pragon- -Throne. I have, to .insist upon this point, as.it is the keynote of' Chinese travel, .perhaps tho most marvellous organisation in a land of marvellous organisations, and one which seems quite unknown to the people at Home in general. None the less, Mr. Farrer and his companion met with serious dangers, but for these a superstitious belief that they had brought about an- outbreak of plaguo (through, violating the sanctity of certain mountain spots) was mainly responsible. They jnanaged' to elude the much-feared White Wolves, taking part in tho defence of a small town against these worthies, and found the chief fault of the local officials was the excessive and often inconvenient precautions taken for the travellers security. The author's description of the civil and military administration of the little city of Siku, and his portraits of those high potentates thereof, "Great Lord Jang" and "Great Man Pung," are full of dry humour. _ With some of the ecclesiastical dignitaries the travellers did not get on too well, but on the whole they found the other officials and common folk very friendly. No recent book dealing with China gives a better and more sympathetic de- . scription of the Chinese people, whoso good qualities the author rightly contends deserve to be better known and more widely recognised in Europe. Mr. Fairer has much to say concerning Buddhism, which, as practised in China and Tibet, appears to he . a strauge jumble of honest faith and sinccro devotion and gross superstition. Tho living Buddhas who constitute a spiritual rank, like the Cardinalate, seem to be chosen not-infrequently as numb, for mundane and financial reasons as for any. special spiritual qualifications. "Itfch families can- arrange to have a living Buddha, and wealthy abbeys can be enriched 111 the sphiuial world by lavish disbursements in tho temporal." To the Western mind the life of a living Buddha is like that of the policemen in the Gilbertian opera, scarcely one of unqualified happiness. These latter day deities are, says the author, "no more supposed to possess mortal blood than the Queen of Spain legs." This dogma leads the unfortunate inhabitants ot sacied bodies into strango and dimcult places. Thus, Mr. Farror writes: When one of the most illustrious of the confraternity was riding down to Sining once his mount stumbled and tnrew him, and the holy man sustained a bloody nose. In such a case he must by no means be seen by tho world. Accordingly, he had to lie perdu in a bush all day until dusk canio down and pormitted His Holiness to ride surreptitiously into the city with his handkerchief over hie face. Even the Buddha of Garam, when in the necessity of having a toojli pulled, must repair with caution to the nearest, missionary, and there, in the farthest corner of the inmost and most secret yard, with watchers posted against. spies on all the wails, the tooth is reverently removed and wrapped up, and every drop of the sacred blood is made,to fall into a liltlo hole previously dug in the garden, into which tho divot is afterwards replaced, and every trace obliterated that could possibly betray to a censorious world that the sacred body had lost anything of its essence. Mr. Fnrrar does the Buddhist faith the credit to admit that it is responsible for a singular gentleness and humanity amongst its followere. His account oi his visit to a living Buddha at Joni is specially interesting, Tim two volumes contain a large number of illustrations, not only of rare plants and flowers—some of these latter of quite oxquisite beauty—but of the scenery and people of tho country. Mr. Farrer's work is ono of the most interesting and valuable additions to the litcraturo of travel, botany, and ethnology which has been published for some timo past, and should find a place in every public library worthy the name. (English price 305.). "The New Prophecy." In "The- Now Prophecy" (Ifoddcr and Stoiifjhton), Mr. 11. K. Arnaml claims to givo a special ''message to the modern world —one which, if "heeded, will provide a powerful antidote to that trinity of .spiritual toxins, \Srepticisin'i' 'Evil Spiritism,' and 'Fatalism' —whoso influences pervade tho century like poison gas.' . The "message," is this: The Divine character of tho Hevclatfon contained in Holy Writ stands proved to-day by tho fulfilment, therefore, of its prophociee. There is a nioro
complete fulfilment to come. The nature of that fulfilment depends to a largo extent upon ourselves. Mr. Arnaiid devotes somo two hundred pages to bhowiitg how, so he contends, the visions or propiiecies contained iu the Hooks of Daniel and Kevolation havo btcii, or aro ; in the courßo of being, verified during tne Great War. Ho promises to "go moro fully into the several parts of tho mbject" in three more books, yet to be published, wherein also "opportunity will be afforded for a consideration of other prophecies of the Bible," Tho work bears evidence of great industry in Biblical research on tho part of tho author, and no small ingenuity in the piecing together of various historical events in alleged proof that the predictions quoted are being unfilled. (N.Z; price, 3s. 6d.) *
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/DOM19180302.2.66.1
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 140, 2 March 1918, Page 11
Word count
Tapeke kupu
1,325BOOKS OF THE DAY Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 140, 2 March 1918, Page 11
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Dominion. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.