NOTABLE BOOKS
IN THE LAND OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE. By Odette Keun. (Lane. is. 6d.) IN 1920 an impetuous, courageous and intelligent young
Frenchwoman decided to explore Georgia. The country was just beginning to settle itself, having passed through a rather benevolent revolution and not having yet come into the hands of the Russian Bolsheviks. In spite of Govern- mental warnings of brigands—which turned out to have been well founded—Mme. Keun set out with a young Georgian officer and a handful of militia to travel through the moun- tainous and varied provinces of a country that sounds from her own vivid descriptions rather like a child's dream of a strange land ; brightly coloured, kindly, sinister and magical. On horseback she climbed mountains so steep that the ground touched the horses' chests, swam raging rivers, traversed impossible bridle paths in pitch darkness with the snow underfoot frozen hard, travelled fifty miles a day in storms and arrived as often as not at a sullen village where the only shelter was a barn or—which was perhaps worse—a lice- infested room of a peasant's cottage, thick with smoke and very dirty. But there were compensations. The scenery was extraordinarily beautiful ; all the colours one has heard of are named by Mme. Keun in her descriptions of those fruitful plains and terrible shadowed mountains, and it is obvious that her exuberant praise is well founded even if eventually it becomes necessary to skip a page or two of the rhapsodies. But when she is speaking of the Georgians and their customs and houses, there is no question of skipping. Every province in Georgia differs from its neighbours ; the savage, warlike Khevsouvebi, who send all women about to have children out to isolated huts to suffer confinement alone and absolutely without help and who still wear armour in battle, from the Pshavlebi next to them, that mournful, gentle race who make pathetic efforts to better themselves in spite of constant bullying by their neighbours ; or these from the Svanebi who live each family in a single group of houses protected by a tall white tower with a cap of rusty red, and who are so avaricious that they exact payment from travellers passing through their territory. The Land of the Golden Fleece is a fascinating book, and not the least delightful parts of it are Mme. Keun's own ingenuous reflec- tions upon her violent (but very human) quarrels with the charming guide when the road became too rough for endurance or the hostile villagers too irritating to be borne with. Georgians on the whole though must be the most delightful of people. Courtesy like theirs cannot be found in Europe. " People so generous, liberal, charming and chivalrous," writes Mme. Keun, " deserve success." But she is sadly doubtful of their happiness now that Russia has laid a hand on them.
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