Pioneer Histories The Spanish Conquistadores. By F. A. Kirkpatrick. (A.
and C. Black. 15s.) The Exploration of the Pacific. By J. C. Beaglehole. (A. and C. Black. 15e.) Tim. ".Pioneer Histories " excel in disposing masses of material so as neither to skimp interesting detail nor to swamp outlines with names and facts. These two latest volumes, written in very different styles, are both first-rate. Mr. Kirkpatrick conveys the feeling of excitement and renews amazement at a story which surely has no equal for strange- ness and terror.. Half the globe had lived since the beginning shut off from the other half ; and suddenly one half experienced an irruption, as if from Mars in some Wells story, of a new fierce race from the sea's rim, some of them walking, some of them apparently part of a beast with four legs and two heads, and -both kinds killing with thunder fiom a distance. And within a very few decades the whole chain Of inter-related civilizations between Florida and Patagonia had been shat. tered and their peoples enslaved ; maniples of aliens, a hun- dred here, two hundred there, were madly traversing immense wildernesses and rivers that were what Sir Walter Ralegli called the Orinoco, a labyrinth and confluence of waters.
They were ransacking tombs for gold and jewels; they were torturing the aboriginals Is to make them reveal gold; they were appearing with the startling manner of some demoniac theophany in regions whose inhabitants might have thought themselves safe for centuries to come ; and they were making their lunatic " requisition " from groups rounded up to listen to terms whose import they could not possibly understand until they found themselves being burnt alive in batches as " rebels " against theni. The " requisition " alleged (and once would serve, for this " two-handed engine " always stood ready to smite swiftly and crushingly) that a person of whom they had never heard had made of them and their land a present to a people of whom they were now hearing for the first time : that their duty was to provide gold and become Catholics. And for their souls' salvation and the good of their saviours they were parcelled out to the newcomers as so much labour attached to estates. It was all done with the highest gallantry and for the glory of God and of Spain. As the French peasant said, when the English subaltern told him he wanted jambon, fromage, lapin, " pour la messe "—" Mon Dieu! quelle religion!" This, variegated with merciless civil wars among the strangers (all nominally servants of one king) is the story Mr. Kirkpatrick has told again, with economy and vividness. Anyone who has ever felt his heart sink at the prospect of a mountain of facts which he had to reduce to intelligible narrative will doff his bonnet to his skill.
Dr. Beaglehole's Exploration of the Pacific moves slowly, as if the author were one of his voyagers, following the un- folclings of new islands being charted for the first time. 11;. is telling not of armies scattered by " fiery handfuls," but of men alone in the desolation of some ocean that continued day aftei day and week after week, with no prospect of land to close it ; or tracking dim shores which might prove to be part of the expected austral continent stretching to the Pole. But this more pausing manner is as exactly right as Mr. Kirk- patrick's exhilarating speed. The author writes out of familiarity with the seas and lands where his voyagers pass, which books can never give and which the writer who has it need never obtrude. This familiarity enables him to bring out the achievement of Cook as I have never seen it brought out befoie. I gather " that Dr. Beiglehole is 'a New Zealander ; the inhabitants of those most Fortunate Isles seem able to combiae the modern outlook with fairness and tolerance towards the past. He emphasizes those qualities in which Cook stood • apart from his age—his unique sense of the im- portance of hygiene and diet, his pity for the savages who so naively.pillaged him with the most innocent of intentions, his clemency as a commander. But every part of this book seems to me excellent. If I have selected that dealing with Captain Cook, it is merely because Cook was my own country- man. The author is equally just and happy when he writes of Magellan or Tasman or Bougainville.
EDWARD THOMPSO',
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