12 AUGUST 1938, Page 30

The author and her husband were both geologists, but when

he was sent to the Gold Coast Mrs. Fowler-Lunn was not allowed to accompany him. Partly, one sospects, to show that a woman could work under the same tropical conditions as a man, she went alone into the hinterland of Sierra Leone to prospect for-iron-ore, gold and other minerals in districts where their presence was reported but not confirmed by an expert. With a few native carriers she plunged into one of the most uncomfortable and unhealthy parts of the world, low, malarial and pestiferous. Nothing seemed to affect her enthusiasm or her work, and her mapping and charting led to her being offered a job as prospecting agent for a mining company. She accepted the job, and again went up into the interior, this time with the added responsibility of having to stake any claims she thought worth working. It was a tough job for a solitary woman to undertake, but she carried it through successfully. She became known to the natives as the gold missus, hence the title of „her extraordinarily interesting book (Allen and Unwin, I2S. 6d.).