COLONEL COLVILE chivalrously takes upon himself responsibility for
the title of the volume in which his wife has recorded their joint
experience of a trip round the coast of Africa. _Round the Black Man's
Garden_ is about as bad a title as a book could have. Happily, Mrs.
COLVILE'S clever travel notes triumphantly carry the weight. The
travellers commenced their journey at Suez, visiting places in the
Red Sea which voyagers by the P. and O. steamers pass by on the
other side. They made their way down the west coast by all the most
uncomfortable means of conveyance attainable, culminating in the
filanzana, in which instrument of torture they were carried across the
hills and through the swamps of Madagascar. Colonel COLVILE, just
now enjoying himself amid the privations of the journey up country to
Uganda, is well known as an indomitable traveller. In Mrs. COLVILE he
found a worthy companion. On a merry page of the narrative of life in
Madagascar, it is incidentally mentioned that the travellers arrive at
Malatsy with their luggage soaking after a dip in the river. They dine
in a whitewashed hut, with an army of big cockroaches overrunning the
walls. Resuming their journey next morning they "entered a dense cloud
of singularly malignant little black flies." The half-naked porters
were soon streaming with blood, and the passengers' faces were in a
similar condition. "Luckily," writes Mrs. COLVILE, in her cheery way,
"we were soon clear of the infested belt, to move in the course of
half-an-hour into a flight of locusts." Mrs. COLVILE takes as the
motto of her book the proverb, _Qui suit son chemin arrive a la fin_.
My Baronite arrived at the end of Mrs. COLVILE'S fascinating narrative
full of admiration for her courage and good temper. But as long as
Piccadilly and Pall Mall are not "up," he will be content with them,
and would rather not follow her road.