17 MARCH 1928, Page 21

Mr. Crosbie Garstin's The Dragon and the Lotus (Heinemann, 10s.

6d.) is the third new account of a journey across America to Japan, China, and Siani that we have read within one year. The other two books were very good, and Mr. Garstin's does' not lower the level of the trilogy. Here one feels at once in excellent company, and so it is all through. Mr. Garstin travels as a journalist, gleefully noting the " Homelike Funeral Parlours" of Chicago, picking up entertaining scraps of information about the Hong-Kong pirates ; " chawing and chewing" at that Japanese delicacy, the cock's comb ; or telling over again the great story of the Foochow tea-clippers as if he were the first writer who ever told it.

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