The Adventures of Captain Mago. By Lon Calann. Illustrated by
F. Philippoteaux, and translated from the French by Ellen R. Frewer. {Sampson Low and Co.)—Captain Mago is a Phcenician mariner, who makes an expedition to Tartessus, is blown by a storm down the coast of Africa, doubles the Cape, and so finds his way back to the Red Sea. In the course of his travels he pays a visit to King David and another to the Queen of Sheba, and of course meets with dangers and adven- tares of all kinds. The object of the book, says the preface, is "to present, in a popular form, a picture of the world as it was a thousand years before the Christian era, and to exhibit, mainly for the young, a summary of that varied information which is contained in books, many of which, by their high price and exclusively technical character, are generally unattainable." M. Ldon Cahun has studied his subject diligently, and assimilated a vast amount of information with character- ietic French skill. That he has avoided all anachronisms we cannot un- dertake to say, but it would require some special knowledge to point them out ; nor would they be, as far as we can judge, of much moment. A picture which necessarily owes so much to imagination may of course be very unlike the truth, but the author has taken all reasonable pains with it. And whether he has succeeded or no, he has anyhow made an interesting volume, and given a reality of some sort to very shadowy persons and places.
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