29 APRIL 1960, Page 14

that strikes you as you read Pierre f3ert1 pleasantly written

and highly organised De: It's as much the incidental studies: of 991 Smith's pickpocket dictatorship at the entrance..,,I White Pass; of all the boosters who mill would-be prospectors lay out sixty Odle dollars on elks, ice-bicycles, dried egg Pc t.& that turned out to be yellow cornmeal, and u'r;j tons that read 'Yes, I'm going in the springYince of Dawson's annus mirabilis when milk was times the price of whisky, and the barmen, 810 measuring gold-dust all day, panned the from their fingernails before they went to '; And even characters mentioned only in Pissitst will be hard to forget: the Indian wife man who first struck it rich, for instance. Set ri b in a ritzy Seattle hotel she was so perPl°etht the layout of the place that she went along corridors blazing a trail to her room with a sort hatchet.

01.0

GEOFFREY NI(11-

Over the Precipice

The Fall of Parnell. By F. S. L. Lyons. WI* ledge, 42s.), Of