WIDE WORLD

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24866, 4 May 1946, Page 5

WIDE WORLD

SEA LIFE “"V-ASF® 1 ’ “ d „Wli*le«. By Robert Gibbings. J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd. 114 pp. rJSs? e i, reade 7 ■» il L know thi6 book 3114 was flrst issued as a Penguin, y s ars . ago, so that it predates Jbese chronicles ot inland waters and Wve y => S nd hy T a S d °P tbem-Tbames, ?p d i Llff ey—the vagaries of ’ bvely and learned, were peculiarly welcome during the war. This 2r2Xil SSUe “enlarged and contains a ?ratinn r Jl 1 Sy b ri r ° f r G ibbings’s illusi™tlons—mostly blue-tinted under- , je. r dra wings of fishes and i arine bS?5 ta u < ’5’ < To Produce these Mr Giblearn how tp manage ?*y equipment, xylonite drawciMr?v r K- and pei ? Cll at th e same time. Clearly his experiments were suc-ess-to w, # The SF®? 1 , 6 of his adventures l"!4 tS n. fro £ 1 jTebiti to the Ben udas usd»^ he ? ed Sea ’ are not all MrtL « r ’ nor v re aU his subjects marine. He can be soberly and fa»>cmatingly informative about the regugUstene? r reproduction, of “ the J e Phosphorescent sea- , P al °l°’ and the incid4 j IS Phenomenon on the .apleifln'^Jlar K a ? < ?v Custonl over a wide S ut the scientific observer Becomes the humorous one in a twinkmiLi2 vl ’ e, j ?j® Professor and his 1 lady com P an ion go out in their skiff to spy on the palolo .... me«,E?£ r SU !. tS Mr Ribbings and his method as well as fresh. PROBLEM OF THE TSANGPO Chb »-' n be A Journey, 1911. By Lt.-Col. F. M. Bailey. Cape. TomE? LM hrOaSh and

«Ke°l onel Baby’s map and his first geographic problem to which hts book owes some of its interest. • West of the three great parallel rivers, Yangtse, Mekong, and Salween, three others flow from the north w mto the Assam plains, Lohit, Dibong. and Dihang. East across the southern portion of Tibet flows the Tsangpo. The question a century ago was, whether-it flowed into any of these rivers or into the Irrawaddy; and the answer was long sought, the Survey of India, in the ’sixties and eighties, sending out several small reconnaissance parties at great hazard through a wild and hostile territory. In Colonel Bailey’s view, Krishna (or A.K., “the secret sign under which he worked”), leader of one of these parties, definitely showed in 1879 that the run of the Tsangpo must continue either in the Dibong or in the Dihang; but doubt persisted until 1911, when the Abor Expedition “practically established” the identity of the Tsangpo and the Dihang. This left a subsidiary question; what course the Dihang followed in falling some 9000 feet between the mountains of southeast Tibet and the Assamese plain, a straight-line distance of only 120 miles. The Survey sent out a Mongolian lama, with a servant called Kintup, to resolve this question; and the pages in which Colonel Bailey describes Kintup’s brave, resourceful persistence, when the lama deserted him, are among the best in the book. It was to take up Kintup’s four-year task apd complete and cneck his results, 27 years later, that Colonel Bailey formed the plan of penetrating to the Tsangpo-Dihang from China, instead of through Assam. The rest may be left to the reader, who will find Colonel Bailey’s matter-of-fact, conversational manner delightfully well suited to record the episodes and encounters of his long march. FILMING CANNIBALS Bride in the Solomons. By Osa Johnson. George G. Harrap and Co. Ltd. 224 pp. Mrs Johnson’s new book, like its predecessors, describes adventures shared with her husband, Martin Johnson, on his quest for cinematograph films of wild life. (His death has ended a quest in which he had no superior and few rivals.) The pre-war period is not precisely dated; the ‘‘Bnde in the Solomons” is Osa herself; this post-honeymoon expedition was to “prove cannibalism a fact, with still and motion pictures”: "All I want is one good shot of them,'* Martin said over and over again. "Just one good scene of cannibals actually eatIng human flesh. That will be the whole story, right there on the screen. . . . More than 200 pages are to be turned before the Johnsons—the boo-boos silenced, the cannibals grunting, Osa’s heart thumping, and Martin’s camera clicking—overlook such a scene among the Malekula hills. They will be turned without impatience, however. Ampng these islands, to which the war drove grimmer expeditions after them, the Johnsons found all that was necessary to make the success of theirs and the success of this book. The climax of the feast is, when all is said and done, superfluous to it. Why do the Savo sharks dote on young girls? Giant clams, three feet across, that snap a careless digger’s toes or fingers off. The pompous funeral of a chief’s son, the art of cleaning and drying and preserving a human head, the dance of the ape-men. There is no end of such topics, and no end to Mrs Johnson’s relish for them. AUSTRALIA Central Australia. By C. T. Madigan. Oxford University Press, Melbourne. 316 pp. z Bush Ways. By Archer Russell. Aus- ( tralasian Publishing Co. Pty. Ltd.

19G pp. Dr. Madigan’s book is- a new, revised, and enlarged issue of the one he first published in 1936. This was based on his study of Central Australia, and especially on the first-hand study of a traveller, up to 1932; the present edition carries the personal narrative up to the outbreak of war and corrects and adds information till then, and beyond, for there are some references to ’changes due to war-time action. Dr. Madigan knows this 'erritory as no other man does, and his book is the most complete and authoritative that can be referred to. on the history of its exploration and development. administration, transport and communication (Horse, camel, railway, truck, and aeroplane), mineral and other resources, community life, and “atmosphere and scenery.” But this is much more than a work of reference, and indeed is not written in the conventionally arid style of such works. Dr. Madigan is to be read, as well as referred to; and he will be read with sustained interest. There is an admirable set of maps, besides a number of good photographs. Mr Russell’s “Bush Ways” overlaps Dr. Madigan’s geographic field to some extent. He records “a bush-lover’s wanderings on plain and range in Central and Eastern Australia.” There can never be too many books of this kind; and this is a very good one in that kind. Pardalote. dotterel, and lyrebird: echidna, wombat, and sauran; the Dorrigo hills, the Snowy River country, the camel trails of the central steppes—such are Mr Russell’s themes, and he works on them with the full equipment of a sound (but popular) naturalist observer. There are many fine photographs. OCEANIA Pacific Parade. By Frank Clone. The Hawthorn Press. 123 pp. Through Angus and Robertson Ltd. Mr Clune offers the dozen miscellaneous chapters of this book, modestly enough, as no more than “a series of random impressions of my wanderings hither and yon. odd bits I've picked up here and there” —a contribution, nevertheless, towards new stream of literature which the war-stimulated interest in the Pacific region will produce. He tells, for instance, the story of William and Mary Bryant, Botany Bay convicts, who escaped in a fishing-boat and sailed to Koepang, of their arrest, Bryant’s deatn, and James Boswell’s charitable (and successful) efforts to obtain Mary the King’s pardon and release. (Why does Mr Clune, quoting Boswell’s diary, add: “Boswell, like Johnson, was often ‘punch-drunk’ ”?) Again, Mr Clune gives a lively account of a journey among the Dyaks, the “wild men of Borneo.” He is always entertaining, but sometimes over-sprightly.