GEOGRAPHIC 



LITERATURE 



The Tower of Pelee. By Angelo Heil- 

 prin. With 23 full-page plates. Pp. 

 62. 9% by 12% inches. Philadel- 

 phia : J. B. Iyippincott Co. 1904. 

 $3.00 net. 



This exceedingly handsome volume 

 is a supplement to " Mont Pelee and the 

 Tragedy of Martinique," published by 

 Professor Heilprin in 1902. In it the 

 author discusses the peculiar spine or 

 obelisk which was thrust up the throat 

 of Mont Pelee in 1903, rising to a height 

 at times of nearly 85c feet, and which 

 has since entirely disappeared. The 

 series of views of this obelisk taken by 

 Mr Heilprin and published in the vol- 

 ume are remarkably fine. One of them 

 is republished in this Magazine on page 

 86. Mr Heilprin also publishes several 

 pictures of glass water bottles and wine 

 glasses which show marked deforma- 

 tions of substance without breakage. 

 " There are no indications of glass flow, 

 and the only apparent change that the 

 glass has undergone is an acquired mur- 

 kiness. The substance had evidently 

 yielded to pressure impacts at a time 

 when it was subjected to and softened 

 by great heat. This condition suffi- 

 ciently explains the similar condition of 

 objects found at Pompeii, and does away 

 with the necessity of assuming that the 

 deformation was the result of a slow and 

 steadily progressing molecular change 

 whose workings extended through cen- 

 turies (!)" Mr Heilprin believes that 

 Pompeii was destroyed in very much the 

 same manner as St Pierre and not, as 

 has been generally assumed, by ' ' simple 

 incineration.'' 



A Naturalist in the Guianas. By Eu- 

 gene Andre, F. R. G. S., F. Z. S., 

 M. S. A. With 34 illustrations and 

 a map. Preface by Dr J. Scott Kel- 

 tic New York : Charles Scribner's 

 Sons. 1904. 



This is a real book by a naturalist 

 and explorer of the old type, and from 

 preface to conclusion is full of vivid and 



sharply drawn pictures. To any one 

 who loves the solitude of the forest or 

 who has felt the charm of the tropical 

 jungle the book must appeal in the same 

 way that Belt's "Naturalist in Nica- 

 ragua ' ' or Bates' ' ' Travels on the 

 Amazon ' ' have for many years fired 

 the imagination of the youth of America 

 and England; but to the writer the book 

 has an additional reality and an inde- 

 scribable fascination, for it describes the 

 travels and ghastly hardships of a friend. 



In 1899, while traveling with Mr 

 Barbour Eathrop, of Chicago, I met 

 the author in the Port of Spain, and I 

 shall never forget the enthusiasm with 

 which Mr Eathrop announced the dis- 

 covery of this unusual naturalist. We 

 traveled with him later from Ea Guayra 

 to Panama, and the last time I saw him 

 he was running home a charge in his 

 muzzle-loader after a shot at some gor- 

 geous Colombian song bird. 



To the public at large South America 

 is a puzzle. It reads of the great in- 

 dustrial and railway development of the 

 Argentine, of the immense waterway of 

 the Amazon, of the beauties of Rio de 

 Janeiro, and of the ancient Inca civil- 

 ization of Peru, but there is a silence in 

 the popular literature regarding the im- 

 mense center of the continent, to which 

 these civilizations of the Argentine, Chili, 

 Peru, and Venezuela form the merest 

 fringe. Eugene Andre has pushed his 

 way along the watercourses and through 

 the jungles of this greatest of all unex- 

 plored tropical regions of the world, and 

 this book which he has written gives a 

 picture of the extreme discomforts, the 

 real hardships, and the frightful ex- 

 posure to disease and starvation which 

 attends the work of exploration in the 

 uninhabited tropical forest. To a boy 

 familiar with the popular literature on 

 tropical forests nothing could be more 

 delightful than to make one's way, with 

 hunting outfit and canoes, from Rio to 

 Panama, living on the game and the 

 fruits of the forest. Andre's account of 



