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THE BREATH OF THE DESERT : AN ACCOUNT OF A JOURNEY THROUGH ALGERIA AND TUNISIA. By Edward Ossendowski. English Text by L. S. Palen. (Allen and Unwin. 16s4-Professor Ossendowski's Beasts, Men and Gods was so good that this book (like his other recent volumes) is a little disappointing. He has attempted what two Frenchmen, the brothers Tharaud, have done several times to perfection- that is, to render in an artistic form the total of impressions produced on a trained observer by a strange country. This is no record of exploration or adventure, nor is it a guide book, although sometimes the method of the guide book at times crops up. We are sometimes conscious of the personally conducted tourist, on whom a beneficent French Government showered pamphlets-as is the habit of governments when they take a writer under their wing. Here and there Professor Ossendowski repays his hosts with a perfectly just observation, as when he notes at Constantine that French engineers, seeking to bridge the ravine, had proposed to base one of the spans on a rock crowned by the mosque sacred to a famous marabout •, but, learning that a legend prophesied disaster to any violation of the sanctity, they altered their plans, not superstitiously, but with that understanding of the psycho- logy and fanaticism of the Mahommedans so characteristic of the French." However, anybody who wants to be informed about the policy of France in North Africa (and there are few more interesting subjects) will get much more enlightenment (for instance) from the few pages of an article by Major Poison-Newman in the current Fortnightly, and the seeker after impressions of the country will find them much more vivid in Mr. Cherry Kearton's book-where, moreover, the photographs are as good as those in this volume are indifferent. What Professor Ossendowski excels in is the admixture of Arab stories dramatically told. " The Love of a Sahira (that is, a sorceress) is fifty pages long, and would make an excellent film. Still, the breath which it conveys to this reviewer is not that of the desert, but of the film writer's studio. The travel pages come alive only when they describe some hunting scene. Then Professor Ossendowski ceases to be the industrious seeker after copy, and shows us a gentle- man vividly enjoying himself. Also, here and there, are poignant notes of the Russian dispersal : for instance, faded ladies in an African restaurant playing, and playing beautifully, the most modern Slav music. Deux princesses russes," he was told.
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