From Pole to Pole. By Sven Raclin. (Macmillan and Co.
7s. 6d. net.)—An anonymous translator has " abridged and edited" Dr. Sven Hedin's Fran Pot till Pol "for the use of English-speaking young people," and the same young people should find it a very attractive geography book. We travel with the original author from Sweden to Constantinople, where his references to the cross upon St. Sophia must stir all minds to-day. Then follow accounts of his different journeys in Asia, through Turkey, Turkestan, Tibet, India, China, Japan, and Siberia. They are written in a genial spirit without much reference to the additions which the traveller has made to the scientific knowledge of the world. The only portion into which some horror creeps is the account of the thirst which slew most of the party in the Takla-mak= desert. An account of Marco Polo's journeys is inserted here, and the book is not by any means confined to the author's own particular spheres of travel. There is a cursory account of Africa, mainly composed of ingenuous stories of Gordon, Livingstone, and Stanley. We travel rapidly through North America in the company of an emigrant Swede, and pass to the history of the Incas and of exploration in South America. Thence we follow an albatross across the Pacific from Cape Horn to Australia. Finally, there are accounts of Polar adventures, ending with Nana= in the North and Shackleton in the South. The book is illustrated with photographs and many small but useful maps.
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