TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3764, 4 May 1926, Page 78

TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE.

“ Beasts, Men, ami Gods.” By Ferdinand Osserdowski. (Cloth, Os net.) Austria: Cornstalk Publishing Company (per Angus and Robertson, Limited).

China, the land of peril and mystery, is always a fruitful source for the w’riter of travel stories. Manchuria, Tibet, and Mongolia are names that inspire excitement, and books that deal with them are always favourites. When, however, one such as “Beasts, Men, and Gods ” makes its appearance, with all its situations guaranteed to have really happened, the reader hails it with special delight.. Dr Osserdowski is a man of long and diverse, experience as a scientist and writer, with a training for careful observation which puts the stamp of accuracy and reliability on his chronicle. Only the extraordinary events of these extraordinary times conlcl throw' a man so talented back into the surroundings of the u cave man,” and thus give us the unusual account of personal adventure, of great human myseries, and of political and religious motives which are energising the heart of Asia. It would be difficult to imagine anything more thrilling than this mysterious and astounding book, one of the most astonishing of present-day “ true ” stories. It is an account of a journey through the oldest and now' probably the wildest of the regions of civilisation, in which the traveller faced danger and death in a greater variety of wavs, saw more astounding things, and penetrated more marvels than has any other man who has embarked upon perilous adventure for many clays. Its astounding, breath-taking, enthralling adventure is a new’, odyssey. First published iin 1922, and now in its thirtieth edition* “ Beasts, Men, and God*” is an utterly absorbing The commonplace that truth is stranger than fiction ever dares to be has never had a finer demonstration.