PEN PICTURE OF SAHARA

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 5, 7 January 1928, Page 21

PEN PICTURE OF SAHARA

"The Breath of the Desert." By Ferdinand Ossendowski. London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd. One has learned to expect from Dr. Ossendowski something far more than a mere travelogue. In "Beasts, Men, and Gods" and similar books from his vivid pen the appetite was always whetted for more, so much romance, coupled with powers of profound observation, did he manage to weave into his writings. Expectations are not disappointed in this, his latest book, his second on North Africa. Taking us through Algeria and Tunisia, he pictures graphically enough the regions where Rome blot; 1 out the Carthage of Hamilcar. In deserts where the simoon-swept oases harboured the camel caravans in the days when Timgrad dominated these sands of the Caesars he draws a picture of the drama of the desert, penning a story that mingles the most modern elements with a sorcery that is as primeval as the sand-scoured rocks amongst which the Vale is staged. He makes the past centuries live again and adequately conveys the spell of the desert —the desert which dominates all who come within its bournes, but which is neve.- conquered. It makes delightful reading for those whose slender purse? or other ties forbid the joys of travel in the world's least-known spots,- the author having the happy knack of being able to record as well as see the soul of the countries and peoples he describes. Hotels, Government offices, wayside Moorish taverns, beggars, descendants of buccaneers, palaces, houses, tents, huts, and mosques, all are graphically pictured with pen and camera, as are Roman and Phoenician ruins and hunting expeditions in the plains or amongst the sandy peaks of the Jujura: and over all hangs the sense of the limitless wastes of the Sahara.