The Romance of Early Exploration. By Archibald Williams. (Seeley and
Co. 5s.)—A young reader who acquires anything like a mastery of this book will have learnt a quite creditable amount of history and geography. Mr. Williams begins with an excellent summary of ancient geography. We might suggest that the five-zone theory of the earth was a popular belief long before the time of Pomponius Mela. It might have been worth while to mention Pytheas along with Hanno and Nearchns, especially as his is the earliest recorded notice of our own island. The second chapter introduces us to the " Journeys of the Pilgrims" ; the third to the Vikings ; and the fourth to the Missionary Friars. Each is full of interest, as, indeed, is bound to be the case when such stories as that of the Chinese pilgrim,
Hwen Tsang, of the Norse settlements in Greenland, and of William of Ruysbroek, with his Tartar experiences, have to bo told. Marco Polo comes next, and after him a less-known
personage, Friar Odoric, to whom Sir John Mandeville was indebted for no small part of what truth there is in his travels.
From Odoric, who came home in 1330 after fourteen years of travel, we pass on to the Moorish traveller, Ibn Batnta, whom Mr. Williams calculates to have travelled seventy-five thousand miles in his thirty years of travel. That is an imposing figure when we consider what travel was in those days, though, of course, a London merchant who chooses to live at Brighton far exceeds it in the course of ten years. Prince Henry the Navigator rightly has a chapter to himself, his work, and his coadjutors. But we cannot follow Mr. Williams through his varied story. The last of his heroes is Andrew Battell, whose wonderful tale of adventure we owe to Samuel Purchas. An intelligent boy could hardly have a book which would give him more entertainment and more instruction.
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