The hero of Pearls, Arms and Hashish (Gollanez, 18s.) is
very nearly but not quite, another Trader Horn. His real name, apparently, is Henri de Monfried • lie is a Frenchman who broke away from conventional business pursuits (he was first a grocer and then a dairyman) at the age of thirty and took a deck passage to the East. Miss Ida Treat, who is his editress, has an able pen and has made the most of her picturesque subject, for M. de Monfried, or Abd-el-Ilai, as he is known in the Red Sea littoral, has smuggled arms, cultivated pearls, traded in hashish and other drugs. From his own account, the majority of his adventures seem to have been of a rather disreputable nature. He makes constant accusations of venality against the subordinate officials of British adminis- tration in the Middle and Far East, and although he seems to have been well treated—sometimes very well treated— by the British officers into whose hands he sometimes came as a prisoner or suspect, he evidently has no love for them. However, this is a curious and exciting book : we cannot remember anything quite like it. There are details of the hideous trade in slaves and eunuchs, and of drug smuggling in Egypt, and India, which indicate how difficult it is to sup, press customs, however vile, which have become ingrained in a fairly numerous section of certain races ; and all kinds of amusing adventures : certainly it is a book not to be missed.
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