RANGING THE PACIFIC.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 7, 9 January 1937, Page 2 (Supplement)

RANGING THE PACIFIC.

A LIFE OF ADVENTURE. Mr. Albert F. Ellis needs no introduction to an Auckland audience; he is, of course, one of our own number, and is the local representative of the British Phosphate Commission. He now follows up his highly successful "Ocean Island and Nauru" with a second book v>f memoirs of his experiences in the Pacific, mider.the title "Adventuring in Coral Seas" (Angus and Robertson). This is an account written in memoir form rather than as a strictly consecutive narrative, of Mr. Ellis' early adventures in Pacific exploration, and veryinteresting and thrilling it is. Mr. Ellis tells us in his opening paragraph that as a boy his two favourite hooks were "Robinson Crusoe" and "The Coral Island," and no one can say that he allowed adventuring to remain a matter of mere reading. He began his career of adventure at the age of 18 by volunteering, with his brother, to bo marooned on. the lonely Hull Island, in the Phoenix group, to plant coconuts, and during the years with which this volume deals his experiences in one corner and another of the Pacific make thrilling reading. It is a difficult matter to single out particular incidents for mention, but one cannot help noticing, for instance, the "turtle-riding" incidents in which Mr. Ellis showed that De Kougemont was perhaps not exaggerating on this 'aspect of his tale; -the account of the legions of mutton birds in the Capricorn group, andvtheir curious "run-ways" and blood-curdling moanings, or the remarkable and original sermons delivered by Captain Walkup, expugilist missionary, to the natives of Ocean Island. Mr. Ellis is interesting in a different way in his notes on Baker and Howland Islands, now "in the news" as possible bases for American aeroplanes. Altogether this is a book of great interest, and readers will freely endorse the verdict of Lord Bledisloe, who writes an enthusiastic foreword to the book.