Book Reviews 



III 



Still, the California deserts are little known to travelers. Mr. Chase 

 shows that they are accessible; that they may be lived in, with some 

 hardship, and enjoyed; that they are full of interest. He should be 

 thanked for his personal impressions of these regions, which he so 

 pleasantly records. 



The book is well printed and well illustrated. A little map of some 

 sort would have helped it. There is an appendix of noticeable plants 

 of the desert, accompanied, however, by a warning to botanists that the 

 descriptions are not exact. A. H. A. 



Vacation Tramps It is perhaps too much to expect a confirmed Sier- 

 iN New England ran would deliberately make a journey to New Eng- 

 HiGHLANDS* land for the express purpose of cHmbing mountains, 



though should he do so he might be agreeably sur- 

 prised at their extent as well as at their beauty. But some day a 

 Sierran may be in that vicinity by chance, and then he would do well 

 to have with him Allen Chamberlain's little volume as a source of in- 

 spiration and information. 



The New England Highlands are in four States. There are the 

 White Mountains of New Hampshire, the Green Mountains of Ver- 

 mont, Katahdin in Maine, which Mr. Chamberlain calls the most impos- 

 ing mountain east of the Rockies, and finally the low but strong-backed 

 Berkshires of Massachusetts. In fact, as Mr. Chamberlain says, "Ac- 

 cording to the map, this is a very tiny corner of the earth that we live 

 in, but to those who make a practice of searching out its attractive 

 spots it soon becomes evident that one life will not be sufficient to ex- 

 haust the possibihties." 



Allen Chamberlain knows his New England better than the average 

 man knows his native land, but he is familiar with other parts of the 

 country too. Many Sierra Club members will recall him as a genial 

 companion and very competent mountaineer. His personality shines 

 through even such a compact and modest little book as this Vacation 

 Tramps, and to read it is like swinging along the trail again in his 

 company. F. P. F. 



A Year The author, in a breezy, interesting style, tells the story of 

 WITH A his cruise to equatorial and arctic waters in a craft once 

 WHALERf despised and still ofttimes rejected by deep-sea sailormen. 



The book is by no means a literary gem, but with Dana's 

 "Two Years Before the Mast" fresh in our memory, our standard for 

 tales of the sea may be too severe to permit us to do this work full 

 justice. Again, one may incline to be prejudiced against a "landlubber" 



* Vacation Tramps in New England Highlands. By Allen Chamberlain. Illus- 

 trated. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York. 1919. 



■\ A Year with a Whaler. By Walter Noble Burns. The Macmillan Company, 

 New York. 1919. Price, $2.00. 



