THE DANGEROUS ISLANDS By Clifford Gessler
Mr. Gessler's account of his three- months' stay on a remote Pacific island is better than most books of a popular type on this subject. The Dangerous Islands (Michael Joseph, 155.) is not free from some of the usual South Sea extravagances, but the author manages on the whole to keep his emotions under control, and the result is a quite attractive description of native life in a comparatively unspoiled and unknown spot. Tepuka is a tiny island in the Paumotu Peninsula over a hundred miles from the nearest land. It has no white inhabitants, ships call only a few times a year, and native life follows more or less its primitive pattern. It is, in fact, just the sort of island haters of civilisation dream about. Mr. Gessler, with unusual common sense, discourages the South Sea paradise-seeker by pointing out the less pleasant side of the idyll as well as the pleasant. He was accom- panied by Mr. Kenneth Emory, an ethnologist, and, although his more scientific notes are confined to a brief appendix, his general observations are reliable and fairly detailed.
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