OR,
WHERE TO GO AND WHAT TO SEE.
By Charles Carleton Coffin. Containing several full-page Maps, showing steamship lines and routes of travel, and profusely illustrated with more than 100 engravings, reproduced from photographs and original sketches. Crown octavo. Morocco Cloth, $3.00; Half Calf, $5.50; Library Edition, $3.50.
"In Mr. Charles C. Coffin we have a traveller after the latest and best transatlantic pattern. He has thrown himself thoroughly into the spirit of his age and race; yet, while loyal to the backbone, and indorsing to the full his country's claims to present grandeur and future pre-eminence, he has a corner in his soul for the merits of other lands, and is open to the lessons of Old-World wisdom. Rapid as was his flight, and superficial as was his purview of the multitudinous objects that daily crowded his path, his powers of observation are, we are bound to say, keen and vigorous, and his judgments upon men and things both shrewd and impartial. Be it the aspects of nature, the historical monuments, the national traits, or the social idiosyncrasies that come before him, we find him invariably alive to what is most beautiful or august or original or piquant, as the case may be. He is at all times happy in hitting off the salient features, or picking out the weak spots, in local life and manners.... The history of British rule in India, and the tokens of material and social advancement everywhere beside his path, are themes after the American's own heart. We have never seen a more graphic or telling sketch of Anglo-Indian life and characteristics within anything like the compass of Mr. Coffin's flying experiences.... Mr. Coffin's studies of life in China are eminently piquant and original. Nothing is too old or too new to escape his notice.... The wood-cuts interspersed among his pages deserve a word of commendation. They are drawn with vigor and truth, often showing touches of quaint and quiet humor. Altogether, if there is nothing new under the sun, Our New Way Round the World shows there may be much novelty and freshness in the mode of telling even a thrice-told tale."—Saturday Review (London).
"The author of this interesting and valuable tour of the globe starts from New York, visits every city of note in Europe, sails from Marseilles to Alexandria, thence to Cairo, and Suez Canal, India, China, and Japan, returning by the way of California. Through this wide field for observation and research, his keen habits of characterization, and his vivid powers of description make him an exceedingly agreeable travelling companion. Mr. Coffin has the very happy faculty of giving to a really thrice-told tale of travel a freshness that carries the reader to the end of the volume with unabated interest. His tour in the interior of the British possessions in India is full of interest,—and his elaborate pictures of China at the present time are valuable, showing the actual character of the people; the tenacity of their prejudices, which appear to resist all innovation from 'outside barbarians,' is most graphically depicted, and is worthy the attention of our politicians and speculative philanthropists. The book on the whole is a valuable addition to our native literature, written as it is from a distinctive American stand-point view of foreign nations. Numerous spirited designs, illustrative of habits and manners, adorn the work, together with maps in abundance."—N. Y. Express.
"A model record of travel, over fields comparatively unknown. It combines, in a remarkable degree, skill and judgment in the selection of facts and points, with clearness, accuracy, and proportion in their statement: a natural ease and grace of expression, with a genial spirit, and a broad, true sympathy with everything human. A very large amount of instructive and attractive matter is compressed in its pages. The illustrations, too, are numerous, and all in admirable keeping with the narrative. In these, and in the clear, fair, readable type, the publishers have well done their part.
"We confess to a deeper, and consciously healthier interest in the perusal than in the reading of any similar volume. Very heartily, therefore, do we commend the book to the winter-evening family circle, sure that it will instruct and charm alike both young and old."—N. Y. Christian World.
"The book has many excellent illustrations, and is written with all the loveliness and instructiveness for which 'Carleton' became famous during the war, as a war correspondent of the Boston Journal. The book is gossipy and entertaining in a high degree, and will interest young and old."—New York Evening Post.
