4 OCTOBER 1930, Page 45

Much information-scenic, political and social-can be drawn from Mr. Kenneth

Grubb's Amazon and Andes (Methuen, 18s.) which describes travel among the Andean States north of the tropic and several water-journeys on the headstreams of the Amazon and its mighty tributaries. There is in particular a good description of the shooting of the Pongo de Manseriche-the famous gorge in the Amazon three hundred feet across and four miles long, plunged in a cleft of the Cordillera a thousand feet deep. Is it a sign of the times that the Agaruna head-hunters who live above the Pongo, having found out that there is a great demand for human heads reduced by their special mode of treatment to orange-size, now supply their European customers with monkeys' heads similarly reduced ? Mr. Grubb draws a gloomy picture of Lowland Bolivia, as of a country where public and private morality could not be at a lower ebb, so different from the prosperity, calm and peace of Cuzco in Peru or the pleasant well-kept Sierra towns of Ecuador. The very numerous and instructive illustrations give additional value to an extremely useful book.