NORTH-WEST INDIA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 108, 8 May 1937, Page 2 (Supplement)

NORTH-WEST INDIA.

AH ENGINEER'S STORY..

There seems to be no end to the stream of books in which writers unveil their lives and ehare their experiences and impressions with their readers. And they come from people of all ranks and spheres in life. One of the latest and most interesting of these is Victor Bayley's "9.15 From Victoria" (Robert Hale). Mr. Bayley is a retired railroad engineer, who "did his bit" in the war and has four other books to his credit and more than one distinguished order to his name. He tells his story in language that is simple and unaffected and yet has a charm and an atmosphere about it that makes it read like a novel. He takes us back, first of all, some 40 years, to the days when motor cars were known as horseless cars, and reminds us that it was in 1896 that an Act was passed at .Home enabling "horseless cars" to be run on the roads at 14 miles an hour, and dispensing with the services of a man with a red flag walking in front. He teTfs us of his early days, and then he goes on to describe his work, with its difficulties and dangers, in building railways in India and in the Khyber Pass. Much of what he says makes thrilling reading. There were rivers, crocodiles, tigtrs, panthers, snakes and pestilence against him. There was the ignorance and superstition of the native workers, the rascality of some of the native contractors, the mutual hatred of the various tribes in the Khyber, and the handicap of the caste system. We also read of fakirs, of jungle night entertainments, of jugglers who possessed strange powers, of nantch girls and their dancing. He tells us many "true" stories, some of them amusing, others uncanny and almost unbelievable. Altogether a most interesting book.