Adventures its the Great Deserts. By H. W. G. Hyrst.
(Seeley and Co. 5s.)—Mr. Hyrst rightly begins his desert eteries of twenty-four travellers and explorers with the adventures of that James Bruce who, a hundred years ago, was one of the "lions" of London. Bruce belonged to that type of intrepid and dauntless courage which has set the example for a long succession of Englishmen. A desert is taken to mean any large treat of waterless country, so that ice-bound regions are excluded; and though the best known are hot and sandy, there are cold, and, if one may use the term, temperate deserts, no less formidable, in Asia and America. Deserts devoid of plant life are very rare indeed. The iiiajoffity of these explorations belong to the first half ef the lag Century, and the arms and equipment of the men, often single-handed, who undertook them must appear miserably inadequate to any schoolboy. This is the remarkable feature of those great travels, the fact that a man of Humboldt's calibre should have practically carried all he required. Possibly the most modern excursions into deserts could not be included, for Dr. Sven Hedin's journeys are as extraordinary as any. There is material enough to keep a boy's interest up to the highest pitch, and the book is well put together.
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