Some Books of the Week I x Thirty Years in the
Jungle (Lane, 18s.), Mr. Hyatt Verrill has produced a travel-book of very exceptional interest : it is lively in style, introduces us to parts of the New World that have been little explored, and is packed full of good observation both of wild men—their life and folk-lore-- and their feathered and four-footed congeners in the jungle. Briefly the book contains an account of the author's various and often hazardous explorations (hazardous because of sick- ness, starvation and poisonous insects, which are the jungle's real dangers) in Santo Domingo, Central America and British Guiana, and every chapter of it offers a wealth of curious, romantic and unusual information. Miss Rose Macaulay, whose Miss Smith of Orphan Island is such an everlasting joy, will be delighted to hear that Mr. Verrill met in the tropical forests of Panama " an elderly lady with grey hair and dressed in a black waist and long skirt of old-fashioned cut," who greeted him with " Good evening. Won't you come in ? I am Miss Smith." The lady was a daughter of an American, an old Nicaraguan filibuster, who had sought in the jungle freedom and refuge from justice. In the heart of the forest the author comes on some old Spanish cannon of bronze dated 1515 ; he tells us how the famous and deadly wurali poison is prepared, and how the preparation of tapioca led to the discovery. of. the British Guiana diamond-mines ; and it is of particular ethnological interest to hear that there are still Caribs surviving in Santo Domingo. All these marvels and curiosities, the author thinks, the aeroplane will shortly bring within the reach of the regular sightseer and presently "tourists will swarm about the headwaters of the Orinoco."
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