Book Reviews. 



8s 



'The Gateway This volume,* published last year and acci- 

 TO THE Sahara." dentally overlooked by the reviewer, is likely 

 to gain an added interest to-day when any book 

 relating to the popular theme of Africa gains immediate attention. 

 But Mr. Furlong's "Gateway to the Sahara" needs no such ad- 

 ventitious stimulus to bring it before the reading public. It is a 

 series of vivid and brilliant pictures of the life of Tripoli to-day 

 in oasis, desert, and coast town, the more pleasing in that the 

 author with a restraint no less admirable than rare has in great 

 measure avoided comment, deduction, or generalization, but, 

 placing the results of his observations and experiences clearly 

 before us, has given us the simple facts for what they are worth. 

 The presentation of much of his material in narrative form, as in 

 the case of the story of Salam, a Hausa slave, not only adds a 

 lightness and variety to his style, but lends to the whole volume 

 the stamp of authenticity. Mr. Furlong gives us characters, not 

 types, and lets them speak for themselves. The book is startHng 

 in its revelation of conditions in existence to-day which we are 

 wont to consider as belonging altogether to the past. The ap- 

 palling pictures of slavery, the story of the forgotten prisoner, 

 entombed for half a lifetime for nobody knew what, who cut his 

 way from his dungeon into the open street, the accounts of the 

 raids of the "Masked Tuaregs," a nation one ventures to believe 

 not one American in a hundred has ever heard of, but which is 

 said to be "master of a territory half the area of the United States 

 in extent," — all savor more of the Middle Ages than of the twen- 

 tieth century. No less engrossing are the desert incidents and 

 experiences with their pictures of the caravan trade. In his pur- 

 suit of information and photographs Mr. Furlong was more than 

 once placed in close proximity with thieves and even in jeopardy 

 of his life. The photographs secured under such exciting condi- 

 tions are supplemented by drawings, many of them printed in 

 colors. The book has a permanent value and is of more than 

 passing interest, for it depicts a Hfe that "nowhere in Northern 

 Africa . . . can be found more native and typical than in Tripo- 

 litania. How long before the primitive customs of this people 

 will give way before the progressive aggression of some Christian 

 power, and the picture of an ancient patriarchal life be tarnished 

 with the cheap veneer of a commercial vanguard, may be answered 

 any morning by the cable news of the daily paper. The great 

 dynamic forces of modern civilization cause events to march with 

 astounding swiftness. Tripoli, in Barbary, is already in the eye 

 of Europe; to-morrow the Tripoli of to-day may have vanished." 



M. R. P. 



*The Gateway to the Sahara. By Charles Wellington Furlong, F. R. 

 G. S. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1909. 306 pages, with illustra- 

 tions by the author from paintings in color, drawings in black and white, 

 and photographs. Price $2.50 net. 



