AROUND THE WORLD
Beyond Horizons. By Lincoln Ellsworth. (Heinemann. tzs. 6d.) Beating About the Bush. By Brian O'Brien. (Cape. los. 6d.) In the Steps of Moses the Conqueror. By Louis Golding. (Rich and Cowan. 7s. 6d.) In Search of the Gyr-falcon : An Account of a Trip to North- west Iceland. By Ernest Lewis. (Constable. I2S. 6d.) THAT the world is wide as well as round is amply shown by these five travellers; who between them cover the six continents and yet (save that the first two have both been through the Panaina Canal and have both visited Copenhagen) whose paths nowhere touch or cross each other. Mr. Mielche is a young Dane who set out with eight compatriots to sail round the world in a schooner whose size he does not mention but which seems from the illustrations to have been of about 150 tons. The Danes visited the Galapagos Islands (where they called on the fantastic German settlers who met with such a tragic and mysterious fate shortly afterwards) and then in succession the Marquesas, Tahiti, Samoa, Fiji and the
New Hebrides before, a hundred and fifty years after La . Perouse, being wrecked in the Santa Cruz group. Hard
though it must be for anyone "who makes such a voyage to avoid writing a book about it,, it is not so easy to see why anybody considered this one worth the labour of translating. No book on such a subject can fail to he readable after a fashion, but the cOnicionsness that he has really nothing new to say seems to have driven the author Into a despairing facetiousness which is carried to the length of omitting Chapter XIII out cf consideration for:a character described therein and inserting it after "Chapter XXII for- the description of the shipwreck. And there, are so many: books of permanent worth which
languish unread in their original languages ! . .
to have early had the love of discomfort developed to a fanatical While Mr. Golding was combing the deserts of Transjordan extent. Even now, middle-aged -as men reckon years, he for the tracks of 'Moses, the late "Ernest Lewis "was looking keeps fit by walking eighteen miles every day, except when in for gyr-falcons' eyries among the crags of Iceland—a very New York, where he wrestles cktily-:With a professional. As -a gallantfeat for a man with one eye and -one arm. _E.rnest.Vesey young man, he worked as an axe-man on the Grand Trimk wrote several books about animal life in England before his Railway,-the being pushed Ihrotigh the 'Canadian Rockies, recent early death, and it was his interest in hawking which sent and he mined, -hunted and.biologised. from Alaska to Mexico. him to Iceland to capture, bring to England and have trained Then his attention turned to Polar exploration and he became some yOung specimens of the greatest, noblest and rarest of the the pioneer of the aerial method and the first man to fly across hawk tribe. The story of his successful quest is one which will the Arctic and the Antarctic. The long years of hardship interest not nature-lovers only, but also all who are interested in and the quarrels with his father were :proved worth while, wild places and a man's triumph over physical handicaps.
The only fault to find with this thrilling book is the lack of . , .Aacirnikui LYALL. an index, for. the specialists who will wish to refer to it will .
Waste . a deal of time searching -through chapters only entitled "New. Blood," "Frustrated," " Gfopitig " and the like.
Africa's Contribution la an excellent and Unpretentious ,de- scritinion of an ex-officer's intrOduCtion to taineroon,qvhither he went: as'. assistant' in 'a -tiacling company. Mr. O'Brien traces his development from--4.he day he lands at Duala as a helpless first-tiiner "- to the time when he is travelling far and wide through thebtish and opening up new trading stations on the little-known 'and still only half-subdued borders of Cameroon,' Gaboon and Spanish Guinea. A first-rate know- ledge of out-of-the-way places is but rarely found in combina- tion with in amusing laid very malicious--pen, and it ma3'? be hoped that Mc. O'Brien will now proceed to give us his experi- ences of 'Nigeria, where . the end of the book deposits him, penniless.but with the promise of a job.- - Readers of-fn the Steps of Moses the Lawgiver will welcome the sequel. Mr. Louis Golding takes up the tale at Mount Sinai and traces the odyssey of the Israelites through the waste hinds of Edom and Moab; which we now know as Transjordan and which seem from hii-accd'unt rather less healthy for a levi
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