ROUND TIP WORLD IN FIVE BOOKS

Six Years ha the Malay Jungle. By 'Carveth Wells. (Heine,. mann: los. 6d.) From Red Sea to Blue Nile. By Rosita Forbes. (Cassell. ..

25s.) , .

Through British Canieroons. By F. W. H. Migeod. (Heath Cranton. 25s.) Game Trails in British Columbia. By A. Bryan Williams. (Murray. 21s.) Two Vagabonds in Languedoc. By Jan and Cora CordOn: (Lane. 25s.) Nor round the whole world but round a large portion of it :

from the Malay jungle to Abyssinia ; thence to the British Cameroon and to British Columbia ; finally, a sojourn in southern France. All this in company as diversified as the countries in question : an adventurotis young railway engineer, English-born but American-accented ; perhaps the most intrepid' and certainly the best-known woman-traveller of the day ; a serious-minded naturalist and ethnologist ; an enthusiastic sportsman ; and two whimsical artists, husband and wife.

The Malay jungle, in which Mr. Carveth Wells has spent six years, is rather a wonderful place, but perhaps even more memorable than anything he has to tell us about it is hiS story of how he contrived to find his way there. " One Monday in May, after getting out of bed on the wrong side and making the baby cry " (thus begins the first sentence of his book), Mr. Carveth Wells reflected that there was no good presenting himself at the office of the Crown Agents for the Colonies unless he could get a " pull." His thoughts went back to his early boyhood days and to " a little green- groCery store in Torquay, Devonshire," where he used to buy apples. With these memories in his mind and a formal note of introduction in his pocket, he sought out " Lord HalsburY, England's Lord Chancellor," at 9 o'clock one morning. " Lord Halsbury entered—a short, thick-set little man with rosy cheeks, over eighty, but erect and immaculately dressed "—what could he do for his visitor ? There ensued this little dialogue :-- '

",I'm afraid you will think it awful cheek. But I wondered if

you would recommend me to the Crown Agents for a job l" He replied :— " Why, I'm very sorry, but I'm afraid I don't know you." I said Oh, but I knew your brother in Torquay. You know I used to buy apples from him ! "

Lord Halsbury's manner immediately changed.

" I shall be delighted," he said, " to write to the Crown Agents

and state the fact. that you know my brother and that I know you to be a young man of remarkable initiative.".

A young woman of not less remarkable initiative, as she has shown so often, is Mrs. Rosita Forbes. She and Mr. Carveth Wells, when one comes to think about it, have a good deal in common—one would like to see how they would review each other's books. From Red Sea to Blue Nile has much of the freshness and frankness that mark Six Years in the Malay Jungle. It is not a book on Abyssinia, we are warned by the authoress in a brief preface : it is the record of three months on mulebaek, " the story of what happened to Mr. Harold Jones, cinema-operator, and myself during an eleven hundred mile trek " through Abyssinian mountains and forests, rivers and deserts—a record of adventures and experiences " serious and frivolous." Among the latter was a conversation" with a certain Somaliland Sayed and an acquaintance of his " in a magenta turban and a blue frock

coat." The Sayed, so it appeared, had already had over eighty wives :—

" Inshaallah, you will haVe to make up the hundred ! " gasped the turbaned one, but the Sayed was indignant. " My grey beard is the result of Wisdom, not of years." he retorted with a scowl ; " I hope, indeed, that the number will be two hundred." I choked over my coffee, for most intimate details followed. . . .

In speech as in action Mrs. Forbes, is daring, as may be gatheied, but she is discreetly daring. There is nothing in her pages to shock- and there-is air immense amount to inform and to amuse.

Mr. Migeod, as he allows his publisher to state explicitly upon the wrapper of Through British Cameroon, does not write " for the reader who requires thrills.- This volume is the third of a series, and, as with the two preceding ones, its purpose is to afford information rather than amusement, It is a careful summary of what the author noted in a journey in 1923 through that " long strip of territory running along

the whole eastern frontier of the colony of Nigeria and extend- ing from the sea to Lake Chid " which constitutes the British share in the former German colony of the Cameroons. Mr. Migiod's style is agreeably simple and his narrative is extremely interesting, whether he is dealing with men or with beasts. Particularly pleasant is an account he gives of a baby elephant, three feet high, whose ration of milk was dishonestly diluted with tepid water. She perceived at once that the liquid " was not as it should be," and after the first taste "squirted the rest over her body with the utmost contempt." She wanted milk, and milk she would have !

Mr. Bryan Williams, who for thirteen years has been Head of the Provincial Game Department of British Columbia, has produced a copiously illustrated work which will be read with pleasure and profit by everyone with any feeling for sport and natural history. He can tell a good tale against himself. " Don't open it here and show me up before all these men," a supposed breaker of the game laws whispered to him on one occasion on a ferry crossing the Fraser River. A suspicious-looking large brown paper parcel was in the man's possession and Mr. Williams and an assistant, as Game Wardens, had to make sure that it did not contain a hen pheasant:

" My suspicions of a joke were such that I heartily wished he had been left alone, but with all that crowd looking on, it was impossible to let him go. So, in spite of his continued protests, the parcel was undone.

The work of undoing the parcel was one of some magnitude. It consisted of a series of parcels, each within the other and all carefully tied with much string. At last, a final layer of paper was removed, and then amid roars of laughter there appeared an evil-smelling dead crow ! "

In their capacity as portrayers of people and places Jan and Cora Gordon seem to be gradually taking all Europe for their province. They have dealt with Spain and the Balkans ; Sweden, it is reported, will come next. Meanwhile here we have their picture of Languedoc. It is a delightful book, full of fun and philosophy and of sympathetic under- standing. It is full, also, of quaint odds and ends of know ledge. For instance, this about a cockerel : " At the age of three hours he was made drunk, he rolled on his back, he turned up his toes in infantile tipsiness. It is the custom

here to give white wine to the first hatched chickens in order to keep them drunkenly quiet till the reluctant hatchers can ooze from the egg." The illustrations to the book are as attractive as the text.