'A NOVELIST'S TOUR OF THE WORLD. By Vicente Blasco Ibanez.
Illustrated. (Butterworth, 218.)—" Gordon
came back to Egypt and began his campaign with one of those romantic gestures which only he could think of. Instead of asking for an army, he jumped on a horse and with one man as a guide, rode from the shores of the Red Sea to the neigh- bourhood of Khartum, made his way through the Mandi's
lines, and entered the city." This astounding balderdash is to be found on p. 356 of Senor Ibafiez's account of his six months' tour round the world—a brutum ftdmen which is probably to be accounted for by the fact that the author describes himself as " one of those writers who produce explosively." But however weak Senor Ibanez may be in his history, his actual travel passages reveal a happy nature and a seeing eye. The seething East catches his enthusiasm and burnishes his pen. For him New York ranks "among the world's most beautiful cities," and " simply as a member of the human race " he is proud of its audacious sky-scrapers, which embody an art " vigorous and frank and thoroughly characteristic of the nation." Wherever he goes he brings an unabated curiosity, and with an innocent interest, so typical of the Spaniard, manages to make his reader share with him in his delight in the alluring and modest geisha, in the low lilt of the Egyptian fellaheen, and in the Hawaiian Isles of love, where adulterers used to be decapitated " according (as a local edict put it) to the law of God." The book is translated in good American, as witness : " The expressman of the Sudan
is not concerned with poetizing his country." -
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