The RoI qf No Return, By A. C. Inchbold. (Chatto
and Windus. Os.)—By far the most interesting part of this book is the description of a Russian pilgrimage in Palestine, drawn from the point of view of one of the pilgrims. The plot is concerned entirely with Russian revolutionaries, and the heroine, Vounia Petrovna Martinet joins the pilgrimage to the Holy Land in order to conceal herself from the authorities, for she is under the impression that she has murdered an official who insulted her. The descriptions, first of Jerusalem and then of the journey into Galilee as far as Tiberias, recall the scenery and surroundings of a journey in Palestine most vividly to the mind,. The scene at the
end, which describes the immersion of the pilgrims in the Jordan,. is also most vividly portrayed. Indeed, this is a scone which those who have once seen it find it impossible to forget,—the flowing river and the luminous light of Palestine making a wonderful background for the lines of white-clothed pilgrims dipping in the sacred stream with the expression on their facet of those who have found their heaven here below. The fiction in the book is of adequate quality, but travellers in Palestine will read it, not for the story, but for the sake of the Eastern scenes which it so vividly depicts.
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