SIBERIA.
Man and Mystery in Asia. By Ferdinand Osaendowski. (Edward Arnold. l4s.)
THE most salient feature of Dr. Ossendowski's book is its revelation of the author's complex character. We are deeply impressed by his power of telling a story, for every chapter is not only interesting, it is exciting. Yet in the presentation of these adventures there is a certain coldness, such as we find in newspaper reports. This quality of pro- fessionalism may give a clear-cut narrative, but it does so by dispensing with intimacy, and sometimes even justice ; while, by its method of callous excision, it leaves the reader with a suspicion that a great deal has been left unsaid that aught to have been said. So when the publishers of this book announce that Dr. Ossendowski's descriptions " will stir the blood of any reader with a touch of adventure in him," their words may be given a double meaning. The author's story does stir the blood ; for there is no doubt that he is a brave man, a calm observer, and a lover of beauty. With these noble strains, however, he has qualities which are to us abhorrent, and which stir our blood only to disgust.
On one page he speaks of his love of nature and the reverent habit, inculcated by his mother, of observation of animal and plant life. Yet he gloats over an evening's shoot where he killed one hundred and five water-fowl ; and he describes how he shot a fox and watched it writhing in its death- pangs. On one occasion, while in the Altai Mountains, he wished to secure a specimen of the condor, but after several attempts he failed to shoot one. He thereupon took " some ducks, and, saturating them with sublimate and strychnine," left them where he had seen the bird. On the first day he thus secured two specimens. To read of the murder of these noble creatures by so dastardly a trick certainly stirs our blood, and it prejudices our reception of the author's generalizations about human affairs.
A whole section of the book deals with the convict island of Sakhalin, lying off the coast of Siberia to the north of Japan. It was an earthly paradise converted by the Czarist authorities into a hell whose horror would have appalled the fire-scarred Dante. The author's narrative is so vivid that we were almost physically sick to read of the accumula- tion of tortures visited upon these victims of the Russian laws ; agonies that drove the remnants of humanity out of their hearts, and left only the ferocity of the enraged animal, so that on the slightest provocation these people turned on each other, torturing and killing ; even a comradeship in despair violated by the superior tyranny. Yet the author tells us that the animal remnants of this system, when freed by the revolution, became the masters of Russia under Bolshevik rule ! This startling statement recalls us to the preface, where we learn that the author served in the " Government " of Koltchak, one of the numerous White " saviours " of Russia supported by foreign monies. Here' is not the place for political dissertation ; but enough has been shown, both of the author's sense of justice and of his political bias, to make us accept with discretion those of his statements which we are not in a position to prove.
So far we have been assuming the fullest prerogative of the critic, which is to look a gift horse in the mouth. We have left ourselves no space to describe the wonders portrayed in the book. The scenes of the author's adventures are roughly grouped into those round the Altai Mountains in western Siberia—regions touched on by Colonel Burnaby years ago—those in Ussuri, on the east coast above Vladi- vostok, and those in Sakhalin. The Ussuri is a mountainous forest land where Arctic meets tropic life ; where the pine and the palm shelter the sable and the tiger ; where the worst dregs of every race of humanity drift in a life of piracy and murder, both organized and anarchic. We can only hint to our readers of the marvels of natural beauty described in these chapters ; the flowers of the steppes below the Altais—vast regions all one garden of lilies, where the body is drugged with perfume. But it is impossible to say more here, and we can only recommend the book as one of the most exciting and vivid narratives we have ever read.
RICHARD CHURCH.
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