21 MAY 1921, Page 24

SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.

[Soiled in this column does not necessarily preclude subsequerl review.!

Knights Errant of the Wilderness. By Morden H. Long. (Macmillan. 78. 6d. net.)—Mr. Long in this admirable book describes the work of eight early explorers of Western Canada. He has written it, he says, for Canadian children, but his clear and accurate narratives, illustrated with photographs and maps, will interest older readers. Henry Hudson, who heads the list of explorers, and Sir Alexander Mackenzie, who closes it, are familiar to us—Hudson as the discoverer of Hudson's Bay, and Mackenzie as the first man to cress Western Canada to the coast of what is now British Columbia in 1793. But the inter- vening men are too little known hero, such as Radisson and Grosseilliers, who, while in the French service, travelled in the North-West and then persuaded Prince Rupert and the London merchants to found the Hudson's Bay Company for trading with the Indiana ; or Anthony Hendry, who in 1754-5 went from Fort York to the Upper Saskatchewan and might have developed the colonization of Western Canada had not the Hudson Bay officials disbelieved his reports. Mr. Long's book is heartily to be commended.