Land Travel and Seafaring
In Many Parts : Memoirs of a Marine. By Lt.-Col. W. P. Drury. (Fisher Unwin. 12s. 6d.) Gun-Running in theGulf, and other Adventures. By Brig.- The Further Venture Book. By Elinor Mordaunt. (Botiley Head. 15s.) David Goes to Greenland. By David Binney Putnam. (Put. names. 6s.)
COLONEL DRURY'S talent is well known as a writer of fiction and of plays. .These memoirs of his service in the famous corps to which he belonged are less attractive than his yarns spun with no direct reference to fact : but it is no small thing to have such an observer's account of the tragic incident when
Camperdown ' rammed ' Victoria ' and Admiral Tryon went under—showing his seamanship in a last signal that ordered no boats to be sent till all was over and the danger ended— foreseen by him at that extremity—of sucked-down wreckage shooting up from the depths, to make more wrecks. There is a vivid story too of the Cretan troubles. Yet, on the whole, a disappointing book, from so good a pen. General Austin has much to -tell, for, in the past thirty and odd years, he has been far afield indeed : but he has not Colonel Drury's gift for narrative. Still, in the stories of the means taken to cheek gun-running from the Arabian to the Persian coast, the resourceful old skipper who turned from smuggler into spy (continuing so far_as possible to get money from both sides) is a fine figure of a courageous cunning sea-rogue.
Mr. David Binney Putnam's pen has not so long an experi- ence to draw on ; but this book, written at the age of thirteen, is not his first. It tells how a pleasant and lucky American boy went with his publisher father in a vessel commanded by Captain Eiob Bartlett—one of Peary's comrades—to sail the Arctic seas, where he saw polar bear cubs lassoed and even a young walrus roped and brought aboard living, and where, over and above other excitements, he got shipwrecked. A jolly book for boys.
Mrs. Elinor Mordaunt is in a different category. An artist in words, and using also a delicately expressive pencil, she describes wanderings that half a century ago would have seemed almost incredible for a woman. The crowning point of her experiences was, perhaps, when the Resident of one of the Trobriand islands (New Guinea coast) sent her off in charge of eighteen prisoners, mostly murderers, and all stark naked, bar one pandanus leaf. The expedition lasted a fortnight, and during it she dismissed the One policeman who accompanied her. But then, she and Papuans of all sorts apparently got on well together. With the Malays of the Dutch East Indies, where she went next in this fit of travel, she felt less at home ; but the beauty intoxicated her. Since there is not space here to write adequately, let Mrs. Mordaunt accept the .highest tribute which this reviewer could pay the book recalls Mary Kingsley all through—but a Mary Kingsley more developed on the artistic and less on the scientific side. Yet Mrs. Mordaunt also has the talent for picking up and bringing in the significant picturesque details of native custom and psychology. What is more, the African traveller would have given the eyes out of her head to be able to illustrate her book as this one is illustrated : for instance, the Malay boy carrying a pole with nineteen white sulphur crested birds tethered to it—to become Chinese Cockatoo-pie.- But she can paint in words too : instance this vignette on the Dutch archipelago. "The entry into strait upon strait— overhung by mountains clothed to their very tops with forests —the mysterious stillness of the water, never reached by the wind, the silence, the dense dark green—broken only once by the flight of two blood-red parrots across our bows.'
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