Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/215

Travel occupies considerable space, and embraces all the works of the early explorers as well as those of more recent times, both British and foreign, who have done so much in opening up the interior and so creating fresh markets for the disposal of British manufactures. Lying off the Coast of Africa on the one side are Mauritius and the Seychelles, and on the other St. Helena, Ascension and Tristan d'Acunha. The collection of works upon Mauritius and the Seychelles includes amongst many others the Voyage of St. Pierre in 1800, Grant's History of Mauritius, Bradshaw's Views of Mauritius with descriptive letterpress, and an account of Mauritius by Milbert, who originally left France with the expedition of M. Baudin, which he accompanied as landscape painter, but was left at Mauritius, owing to illness, when the expedition proceeded on its way to Australia, and devoted himself to a study of the affairs of that island, producing this work in 1812, together with a volume of plates. The best work upon the Seychelles is that of H. W. Estridge, the copy in the library containing several original water colour drawings. The St. Helena section consists of twenty-eight works, Ascension of eight, and Tristan d'Acunha, which as a rule is visited by a British war ship twice a year, of seven. Proceeding to the eastern possessions, there are many of the more important works on India, including Aden, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, as well as separate sections for Ceylon, the Straits Settlements, with the outlying Cocos and Keeling Islands, Burma, Borneo and Hong-Kong. The Ceylon collection is a highly important and interesting one including the works of Knox, Ribeyro, Percival, Cordiner, Davy, Forbes and Emmerson Tennant, in addition to 160 other works bearing upon the history and progress of the island. The Straits Settlements are represented by eighty-six works, and Burma by fifty-eight covering a period of nearly a hundred years, from Syme's Embassy to Ava, published in 1800, to the present time. The works regarding Borneo and Labuan number over ninety including Beeckman's Voyage to and from the Island in 1718, Moor's notices of the Indian Archipelago (a collection of papers relating to Borneo), and all the chief publications of recent years. Upon Hong-Kong, the most eastern Colony, there are twenty-five works. Turning once more to the western hemisphere we come to the West Indies, in which section there are many rare and curious works regarding those islands, which have occupied so prominent a place in the history of colonisation and the Empire. Those worthy of your special