SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Notice in this column does not necessarily preclude sub.mptent revis:o.1 The Gate of Ada. By William Warficld. (G. P. Putnam's Sons. $2.50 net.)—This American traveller made, aboit five years ago, an interesting journey from Baghdad up the Tigris to Mosul and Jezireh (the Roman Bezabde), and thence by the river track to Sea and up the narrow defile to Bitlis, where the Russians and Turks have had many a desperate encounter in the present war. From Bitlis ho went to Lake Van, crossed it in a motor-boat to Van. and then crossed Northern Kurdistan by the Baahkala route to Ursula and Tabriz. It will be seen that Mr. Warfield avoided the wilder Kurdish hills of the Hakkiari and the Nestorian, but he found the track from Jczireh to Sert, by which some of us hoped the Russians might have reached the Upper Tigris, to be extremely rough and difficult. Yet the Turks, to retake Bitlis, must have sent strong forces with guns through this forbidding country. Mr. Warfield writes well and has collected a good deal of information. His idea that the lino from the Black Sea to the Persian Gulf is " the gate of Asia " is unhistorical and has no foundation in the geographical facts. Some one has said, with equal lack of truth, that Asia begins at Oreova.
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