Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The River Of Seven Stars Searching For The White Indians On The Orinoco by Arthur O. Friel Black White/Chapter 7. A LL the next day my Maco-Maquiritare combination toiled back up the Ventuari. And in all that day very little was said. I told White that I had a little ranchería above here, and that I now was returning to it. When we reached that place, I said, we could decide on our future moves. No Yabaranos were in sight, nor was any other thing moving on the water; and there was nothing for us two to do but lie idle. He spent most of the day drowsing in the cabin. I, too, dozed and thought by turns. The coming of the Maquiritares had made my plans more simple in a way. I knew well enough, without asking them, that they now would go back to their up-river home, whether White wished to go there or not. Even if they had to leave him without receiving any of the promised presents, they had finished their work for him. And if I, Loco León, known to them as a man of good heart, wished to go up the river also, they would gladly guide me to their people, with no thought of pay. As I now could make no friends on the Manapiare, I must do what I had let the Macos think I meant to do—I must visit the Maquiritares. Since I had no intention of carrying my supplies farther onward as the Macos thought, I now had no real need of those Macos. But I decided to keep them with me. Then I should know where they were and what they did, and no man down the river would learn that a whole year’s pay for balata work lay unguarded on a little caño . I did not trust the Macos over-much. But I was a little puzzled about what to do with White. His work in Venezuela was over, unless he purposed now to explore the balata resources of the Ventuari as well as those of the Caura, which I much doubted. If he did intend anything of the sort, I had a few strong sentiments of my own on that subject—I was here not to enrich any North American company, or any other company, but to look out for the interests of Loco León. But I believed he now desired only to leave Venezuela forever. The question was, how? There were only two ways; to go to San Fernando and then down the Orinoco, or to come with me up-stream and return to the Caura. The latter plan was by far the better, both for him and for me. The Caura route was much shorter than the roundabout Orinoco way, and, though perhaps more rough, it should be less dangerous; he could make the trip with a Maquiritare guide or two and travel by a course which he already knew—at least from Salta Para down—while of the Ventuari he knew nothing, and at San Fernando he would have hard work in getting men who would not cut his throat. As for myself, I could not send him down the Ventuari unless I gave him my own curial , which probably would never come back to me if I let it go; and I did not care to have any news of my movements reach the San Fernando murder-brigade just then. On the other hand, I was not anxious to take with me among the Maquiritares a man who seemed always to be creating trouble about women. All the Maquiritare girls are very light of skin, some are slender and graceful, and a few have pretty faces. And the Maquiritare men, good-tempered though they usually are, have been known to kill outsiders who meddled with their women. I could see that these two Maquiritares of ours, though they had not blamed the blanco in their talk with me, really did not blame the Yabaranos either for the attack on them. And I knew that as soon as they reached their people the tale of that affair would be told. That night, as White and I hung in our hammocks in my hut, I asked him what he planned to do now. “To get out,” he answered. “What’s the best way?” “Up the Ventuari and down the Caura,” I told him. “That is the shortest.” He shook his head. “Don’t like it. What other ways have you got?” “None, except to go down this Ventuari and then down the Orinoco.” “Then I’ll do that. It’s bad up above here, they tell me. Going down it’ll be all smooth water, and —— ” “Smooth water!” I interrupted. “You have seen the Orinoco only up to the Caura, and know nothing of what is higher up. You have not seen this Ventuari at all, except today. Let me tell you of the ‘smooth water.’” And I described the raudales of the Orinoco. “Oh, well, I can probably get a good boat and men at that town the maps show—San Fernando de Something-or-other,” he said. “It’s like Bolívar, I suppose.” “As much like Bolívar as a caribe is like an arindajo ,” I contradicted. [1] And I told of the Funes gang. “Uh-huh,” he drawled. “But I’ll make out all right. If you’ll sell me a little of this trade-stuff of yours to pay off my boys here with, and scare up a canoe somewhere for me to get to San Fernando in, I’ll fix the rest of it.” “You will need all your handkerchiefs, then,” I retorted, a little vexed. “If you think you have suffered from mosquitoes here, wait until you meet those between San Fernando and Atures.” At that he stiffened. “Say, d’you mean that?” “Mean it? It is the worst place on the whole river,” I declared. And I told him about that too. I did not stretch the truth at all. When one speaks of the mosquito swarms of that part of the river, the simple truth is bad enough. “Hm!” he muttered, lifting a hand to his zancudo sore. “How about the bugs up this river—the Ventuari? Are they any worse than here?” “They are not even so bad. Up among the hills it is cooler, and only a few days from here there are no bugs at all—except garrapatas and such things, and not many of them. So the Maquiritares tell me; and they know.” After a minute he said: “Well, maybe we’d better go that way after all. As you say, it’s shorter.” I stared, and then I turned away to hide a grin. The man-killing bad waters and bad men of the Orinoco were nothing to him, but mosquitoes which might scar his skin like mine—those were more than he wanted to face. Then, thinking ahead, I lost my grin and became very serious. And I said: “Very well, señor . You have chosen the best way. I shall be glad to be of assistance. You may have any of these trade goods at the same price I paid in Bolívar, and I have no doubt that my Maquiritare friends above here will carry you safely and comfortably down the Caura, if I ask them to do so. But before we go among them I must speak frankly to you about one thing. “These Maquiritares, as you must know by now, are a fine race of men—the finest Indians in Venezuela. They are intelligent, friendly when well treated, good-tempered, and brave. In many ways they are almost white men, and in some ways they are better than many men I have known who called themselves white. But still, they are Indians, and not only Indians, but sons of the most resolute fighters known among the Indians of South America—the Caribs.” “It is so,” I nodded. “They are of Carib stock; another name for them is Uayungomo. The Uayungomos of the Caura are the same people who, three hundred years ago, were called ‘Ewaipanomo,’ and fought so fiercely that other Indians spread terrible tales of them, saying that they had no heads and that their eyes were in their chests. And these Maquiritares of the Ventuari headwaters, next to the Caura, also are ‘Ewaipanomo.’ They are not afraid to meet death. Neither are they afraid to give death to men who deserve it. And one thing which makes them feel that a man deserves death is—using their women as playthings.” I paused a minute. He said nothing. So I went on. “Now it happens,” I said, “that you are a very handsome man, and that women come easily to you. You will remember that I was in Bolívar when you were there, and I heard and saw certain things which I need not mention, except to say that you were near death because of those things. If you had been killed there, and the killer had been caught, there would have been punishment for him. But if for the same reason you should be killed up here, there would be no punishment. In these hills the only law is Indian law—Maquiritare law—Carib law.” There I stopped. He was silent several minutes. Then he yawned. “Uh-huh,” he said. “I understand perfectly. Don’t worry. They’re nothing to me—any of ’em. A Spanish señorita of more-or-less high degree is mighty interesting for awhile, I’ll admit, even if she lives in a one-horse town like Bolívar; but these Indian girls who wear nothing but a little bead apron and never heard of a toothbrush—they’re not even interesting. Just show me the quickest way out of here, and you can have this country and everything that goes with it. I’m through.” “That is very good,” I told him. “We shall start onward tomorrow.” “Suits me.” He yawned again. “By the way, thanks for the polite bunk about my looks. You’re a mighty good-looking chap yourself, if you only knew it.” “Then I am glad I do not know it,” I answered. “I have noticed that the men who do know it are often in trouble.” Leaving him to think that over, I went to sleep. ↑ Caribe —the bloodthirsty cannibal fish, called piranha in Brazil. Arindajo —the friendly, brilliant gold-and-black Venezuelan oriole. Arthur O. Friel. Amerykański pisarz i podróżnik-odkrywca, jeden z najpopularniejszych autorów przygodowych groszowców (przede wszystkim prestiżowy Adventure oraz Short Stories). Członek American Geographical Society. Jeden z ulubionych pisarzy Roberta E. Howarda. Po ukończeniu Yale University (1909) został południowo-amerykańskim redaktorem Associated Press. Zaczął publikować opowiadania prawdopodobnie w 1919 roku. Trzy lata później odbył zorganizowaną przez siebie i kosztem własnym półroczną, pełną niebezpieczeństw podróż po rzece Orinoko i jej dopływie Ventuari (Wenezuela). Opisem tej podróży jest książka The River of Seven Stars: Searching for the White Indians on the Orinoco (1924). Jego najbardziej znany, klasyczny cykl powieściowy to McKay, Ryan & Knowlton o charakterze lost race fiction; akcja powieści tworzących ten cykl rozgrywa się w różnych zakątkach Ameryki południowej i przedstawia odkrycia i przygody Amerykanów, którzy ostatecznie zakładają królestwo w pobliżu Peru; ich bazą centralną są starożytne ruiny miasta zbudowanego przez tajemniczą białą rasę. Cztery zostały wydane w formie książkowej: The Pathless Trail (Adventure, 10 października–10 listopada 1921; 1922), Tiger River (Adventure, 20 lipca–20 sierpnia 1922; 1923), w których ludzie są przemieniani w bestie (małpoludy) przez dziwne wino z czarownicy kojarzącej się z Kirke), The King of No Man's Land (Adventure, ?20 marca–20 kwietnia 1924; 1924) i Mountains of Mystery (Adventure, 30 stycznia–28 lutego 1925; 1925) – zawierają liczne elementy f, w tym niektóre należące marginalnie do sf. Drugi cykl opowieści przygodowych Friela, obszerny zestaw utworów, których akcja toczy się w amazońskiej dżungli, to Pedro& Lourenço (Adventure, 1919-1929, 27 opowieści, w tym mikropowieść "The Jararaca" z 30 grudnia 1921), z elementami sf, fantasy i lost race fiction, którego bohaterami są Pedro Andrada i Lourenço Moraes, dwaj seringueiros (pracownicy przemysłu gumowego); doświadczają oni niesamowitych przygód w gęstej dżungli otaczającej rzekę Javary, dopływ Amazonki, stanowiący część granicy między Brazylią a Peru. Cykl ten dopiero niedawno doczekał się wydań książkowych: Amazon Nights: Classic Adventure Tales from the Pulps (zb 2005, ls9) i Black Hawk and Other Tales of the Amazon: The Adventures of Pedro and Lourenço (zb 2010, ls3) - wydawnictwo Wildside Press; Amazon Stories: Pedro & Lourenço. Vol. 1-2 (zb 2008, 2009, 10+10) - wydawnictwo Off-Trail Publications. W ostatnich latach twórczość Friela (dzięki temu, że część jego utworów przeszła do domeny publicznej) przeżywa mały renesans. Na polski nietłumaczony. The River Of Seven Stars: Searching For The White Indians On The Orinoco by Arthur O. Friel. TALBOT MUNDY – The Mystery of Khufu’s Tomb. First published as “Khufu’s Real Tomb” in Adventure magazine, October 10, 1922. First book edition: Hutchinson & Co., UK, hardcover, 1933. First US edition: D. Appleton-Century Co., hardcover, 1935. Several other reprint editions exist. (Follow the link to an online edition of the pulp magazine version.) Talbot Mundy’s career was as strange as anything he wrote, and that is no small statement. A con man and adventurer in India he came to the United States, nearly died, saw the light, and reformed by becoming a writer, almost immediately penning a number of classics such as Rung Ho! , The Eye of Zeitoon , and Hira Singh . He shot to the top of the list of Haggard and Kipling successors and stayed there until his death, his work a staple in the pulps, particularly the grand old pulp icon, Adventure . His King of the Khyber Rifles was twice filmed, a bestseller, and even adapted by Classics Illustrated , and his novel Jimgrim, or King of the World is considered by many, myself included, the greatest achievement of the adventure pulps. Jimgrim featured one of Mundy’s series heroes (Tros of Samothrace, the Greek trader and opponent of Caesar and Cleopatra, is his other great creation), the American Captain James Schyler Grim, in the service of His Majesty’s Secret Service in the Middle and Near East. With his ally and friend Jeff Ramsden, his Sikh friend Naryan Singh, his Indian Secret Agent companion Chulander Ghose, and a small army of Mundy’s other heroes (Athleston King and Cottswold Ommony among them) he battles to keep the Middle East, Palestine in particular, from exploding. All of that fairly standard British Raj rah rah rah save for one fact: Talbot Mundy was no admirer of the Empire and stood for self-rule in India and the Middle East. It was a unique view of the world for an adventure story writer in that era. There is little racism or jingoism in Mundy. Later in life Mundy became obsessed with the philosophy of Theosophy, a semi-mystical religious movement out of Madame Blatavasky and the Golden Dawn. That would have ruined a lesser writer. In Mundy’s case it inspired his finest novels and most loved tales, Om: The Secret of Ahrbor Valley , The Nine Unknown , The Devil’s Guard , Full Moon , and Jimgrim . The change in his work showed first in the Jimgrim tales in Adventure, where Grim and company left the British Army and Secret Service behind and took up with American millionaire Meldrum Strange who financed their adventures from there on. And what adventures they were, a search for what happened to all the coins minted in the ancient world (they were hidden beneath the Ganges by the Nine Unknown), a war of good and evil on the roof of the world where the Black Lodge is challenged by the White, and the final novel of the series, Jimgrim , in which the world must be saved from a fanatical madman, leading to a finale that still stuns the unsuspecting reader today and never fails to bring a tear to my eye. In the transition period from the heyday of the series to the later deeper novels Mundy’s best is the Jimgrim adventure The Mystery of Khufu’s Tomb . It begins when engineer Jeff Ramsden is nearly run off a road on the Geiger Trail near Virginia City by Joan Angela Leich, the kind of headstrong heiress who was common in fiction of the time. Joan and Jeff are old friends though, and she has nearly gotten him killed before. That’s Joan all over, and a welcome breath of femininity she is in Mundy’s masculine world. She is also guaranteed trouble, and here is no exception. This time she has gotten involved with one Mrs. Isobel Aintree, a fatale femme with a cobra’s bite that Ramsden and Grim have battled before. Joan needs help concerning a purchase made while in Egypt during a revolution (the more things change …) where she “…went and bought a lot of land that everybody said was no good because it was too far from the Nile.” Now a man called Moustapha Pasha (“…there are men of all creeds and colours, who can mouth morality like machines printing paper money, but who you know at the first glance have only one rule, and that an automatic, self-adjusting, expanding and collapsing one, that adapts itself to every circumstance and always in the user’s favour. This man was clearly one of those.”) wants the land and won’t take no for an answer, but Joan is too stubborn to ever yield. Just what is on that land that Mrs. Aintree wants it and Moustapha Pasha is willing to bribe Ramsden to betray Joan to the tune of one million dollars (1920‘s dollars at that)? Mrs. Aintree wants it so bad she marries Moustapha Pasha. The answer must be in Egypt, and anywhere east of the Pillars of Hercules there is no better man to have on your side than Jimgrim, so Joan hires Meldrum Strange’s team to help her. As usual Grim knows more than might be expected: “Let’s hope it isn’t true!” Grim answered. “Any such sum of money as that would turn Egypt into Hades! If it’s there it means civil war, whoever gets it!” Two billion dollars and the fate of Egypt, just the sort of thing Grim lives for. And they are off with the help of a Chinese astronomer, Chu Chi Ying, and it is no real mystery what lies beneath Joan’s land. So if Khufu, Cheops, money is not in the Great Pyramid of Giseh, where is it? Want to hazard a guess? Our band of heroes must deal with enemies on all sides and excavate the treasure that Khufu flooded under Joan’s land without drawing too much attention. Mundy never made things easy for his heroes. You may even wish he had, because the danger, sweat, set backs, short-lived victories, and sheer impossibility of the task will leave the reader almost as stretched as the heroes. And it can only get worse, as Grim battles the forces of Moustapha Pasha and Mrs. Aintree above ground while Jeff and Joan are trapped underground avoiding death traps laid by the determined Khufu, and up against blind mutated giant albino crocodiles. Long before Indiana Jones, Clive Cussler, and James Rollins Mundy’s heroes were knee deep in the kind of adventures readers today savor. Today’s heroes rely on relentless action though, and while there is no shortage of action and movement, Mundy’s heroes use their brains first, then their brawn. That is one reason Mundy remains not only readable, but fresh and entertaining to read when so many others have been passed by. It isn’t hard to see the influence he had on Robert E. Howard, Philip Jose Farmer, and Fritz Leiber as well as a generation of adventure writers. His name still triggers images of exotic locales and high adventure in the wild places as much as Rider Haggard before him. I’ll give Mundy, via Ramsden, the last perfect words: I don’t see that adventure today is in any better hands. 9 Responses to “A Review by David Vineyard: TALBOT MUNDY – The Mystery of Khufu’s Tomb.” Jonathan Lewis Says: May 29th, 2014 at 6:42 pm. Very interesting material. Egypt, whether real or imagined, has long held an important place in the Western imagination, especially when it comes to adventure tales. Sorry about the typo, that should be Gizeh (using the spelling of the novel). After Carter found Tut’s tomb in 1922 Egypt was all the rage, though it had been off and on since Napoleon invaded and the Rosetta Stone was translated. Mundy’s Jimgrim and Sax Rohmer’s Daughter of Fu Manchu both feature running gunfights in the Great Pyramid, and Mundy’s Tros spends his last two novels Queen Cleopatra and The Purple Pirate moved from ancient Britain to Cleopatra’s Egypt. Bram Stoker had already done Egypt with The Jewel of the Seven Stars and Baroness Orczy and Marie Corelli had both done Egypt (Orczy’s a good lost city novel). Well before Carter Fu Manchu was described as looking like the bust of Seti (Rohmer had been a clerk with P.G.Wodehouse at a bank in Alexandria). The French have Belphegor, an Egyptian spirit haunting the Louvre, and Karl May’s Kara Ben Nemsi got all over the Middle East, Valentine Williams had Mr. Ramosi set there. Agatha Christie, S.S. Van Dine, and Ellery Queen all used the Egyptian thing. Even Charlie Chan went there in the movies. At least two other Mundy novels from this era are set in Egypt. Jimgrim and a Secret Society and Jimgrim, Moses, and Mrs. Aintree (making something of a trilogy with Khufu). It’s still a popular site for adventure today as note Ken Follett’s The Key to Rebecca, Robin Cook’s Sphinx, Wilbur Smith’s bestselling River God trilogy, and Michael Ondjante’s The English Patient. David, this is a wonderful tribute to Mundy. In the wake of Indiana Jones in the early ’80s, the trades reported that Philip Kaufman planned to write and direct a series of movies based on the Jimgrim novels, starting with THE NINE UNKNOWN. And Ballantine Books announced a tie-in plan to bring the books back to print. Neither enterprise ever materialized, but a purported copy of Kaufman’s draft script could be found on the Web for a while. If it was the real thing, we can probably be thankful that no movie appeared. Today’s readers may want to start with the more mystical entries that you mention — THE NINE UNKNOWN, THE DEVIL’S GUARD, and JIMGRIM, prefaced by KING — OF THE KHYBER RIFLES and CAVES OF TERROR, in the latter of which Athelstan King joins up with Jimgrim’s crew for the first time. The earlier stories, starting with JIMGRIM AND ALLAH’S PEACE, are great fun but mostly straight adventure, no fantasy. If people wonder why the Middle East is the mess it is today, Mundy’s earlier novels and David Fromkin’s non-fiction history A PEACE TO END ALL PEACE are sadly enlightening. Between copies of used paperbacks from the ’60s and ’70s and a more recent wave of POD reprints, Mundy’s books should be fairly easy to find at reasonable prices. And of course, Indiana Jones introduced a new generation of movie goers and readers to Egypt. There were also numerous TV movies set in Egypt, I recall, in the early to mid 1980s. The setting doesn’t seem so popular anymore these days, but I am fairly sure it will again. Ever since Napoleon, Anglo and French audiences have been enthralled by Egypt. It just waxes and wanes. Talbot Mundy is just one of the team of excellent adventure writers that ADVENTURE published during the late teens and 1920’s mainly because of the efforts of one of the great fiction magazine editors, Arthur Sullivant Hoffman. Stories like KHUFU’S REAL TOMB is one of the reasons that I tracked down all 753 issues of ADVENTURE, 1910-1953. The last pulp sized issue appeared in 1953 and then it switched formats to 8 1/2 by 11 inches and became a men’s adventure magazine, sort of like ARGOSY. But I discovered ADVENTURE back in 1972 when I attended the first Pulpcon and looked through some back issues that were for sale. Frankly, I was stunned because even though I was just skimming through the issues, I recognized that here was a magazine with such excellent writers and quality fiction, that it made the other pulps look mediocre. Another collector and I became friends and we started reading the Talbot Mundy stories, especially the Jimgrim series together. We corresponded and visited each other and our discussions always covered where we were at with the Mundy stories in ADVENTURE. I just pulled out my copy of the October 10, 1922 issue and my note says I read KHUFU’S REAL TOMB in July 1975. I was very impressed and gave it an outstanding rating. I still have my set of ADVENTURE and am still reading it. For instance, I just completed novels by Gordon Young about the South Seas; W.C. Tuttle about Hashknife and Sleep, his rangeland detectives; Georges Surdez about life in the French Foreign Legion; and Ernest Haycox about the terrible conditons on the British prison ships in the 1700’s. This review brings back a flood of memories about ADVENTURE and I can only mention a few, otherwise I’d be writing a long article about the magazine. I’d rather read the stories than talk about them all the time, so I must not get started! I agree Walker.. Young’s Don Everhard and Hurricane Williams, Arthur O. Friel, Lamb, Hashknife Hartley, Surdez, so many others. Better to read than write about for the most part. The ideas and images found in the novels written by Talbot Mundy brought me to different level when I first read them decades ago. He blended place, history and theory to a degree to which I was unaccustomed. For a writer to consult an encyclopedia or a movie director to order a set to look like a city in Morocco or Greece or Turkey or to be the catch-all “exotic” is one thing but Mundy upped the ante with his breadth of scope and like a gambler who suddenly grows more serious about the game when the stakes go up, the reader is drawn deeper into Mundy’s writing. I do not always have the same thrill upon returning to works of a writer who had thrilled me years ago and with Mundy I have wondered occasionally for quite a while if reading him again would knock him from where he is enshrined in my memory and if the best decision were to leave him in peace. David Vineyard sparked my hankering to read Mundy again enough. He convinced me to revisit an old teacher who taught me a new way to think about the world. You might want to check my biography, Talbot Mundy, Philosopher of Adventure (McFarland, 2005), for current info on Mundy. I cover such topics raised here as the Kaufman film attempt. The picture is not of Mundy, but Henry King, director of the 1954 movie, King of the Khyber Rifles. Mundy !! Very nice and lively review. I happened to search again for any works by Mundy, after many years. I was enraptured by his writings when I was a young man, a teenager, now I am more than 60, but still really like this writer. As a boy I was deeply impressed with Tros, and later by Jimgrim. In all these many years I have not seen a hero or protagonist in film or literature who is better. I was also, and remain, fascinated by Mundy’s take on Arabic culture…and his portraits of their state of mind and affinities still ring true, and brilliant, even today, at least in my mind. I honestly think some of Mundy’s works should be required reading for security, government and business types going to work in those regions. Thanks for this great review. Nice to see that Mundy serves the Test Of Time and still shines through. Tales of the Lindensaga™ You may well ask what this quote, the first paragraph Elizabeth Peters’ delightful book The Last Camel Died at Noon, has to do with fantasy, as she is a well-known mystery writer. To answer that, we must first mention Allan Quartermain, and in so doing we find ourselves in the realm of Henry Rider Haggard, a writer of adventure tales, many set in Africa. Of the many books he wrote, he is most widely known for two: King Solomon’s Mines (1885), with Allan Quartermain and set in Africa and She, A History of Adventure (1887) with Horace Holly & Leo Vincey set in Africa, both of which had fantasy elements in them. She is considered a foundational work of the fantasy genre and, I think, deservedly so. Quartermain went on to star in many other African novels by Haggard, including his own encounter with Ayesha (She-who-must-be-obeyed) in She and Allan (1921). Mr. Holly has a further adventure with She in the sequel, Ayesha, the Return of She (1905), which is set in Tibet. These are lost world/lost race novels and King Solomon’s Mines is regarded as having started that particular genre and both are fun reading. As it happens, Elizabeth Peters shares with us an enthusiasm for H. Rider Haggard. Her novel, The Last Camel Died at Noon , one of her books about Amelia Peabody and her husband Radcliffe Emerson, is an entertaining tribute to Haggard’s books and involves—you guessed it—a lost race and city. Since her Peabody books are all set primarily in Egypt (Peabody & Emerson are Egyptologists), the lost race is tied to the civilization and culture of ancient Egypt as exemplified in the 25th Egyptian dynasty & its successor kingdoms of Napata and Meroë. We loved it and its sequel, Guardian of the Horizon , which takes place ten years later. Peters ’ nods to Haggard don ’ t stop there, however. In her novel The Snake, the Crocodile and the Dog, a major character is one Leopold Vincey , who, as mentioned above, was one of the main characters in H aggard's novel She . I have no doubt there are o ther such tributes to Haggard scattered through out her Peabody series. We strongly urge you to investigate not only Elizabeth Peters (particularly if you also like mysteries which most of her Peabody books are), but most especially H. Rider Haggard. Stumbling along off the beaten track, we find an interesting book which is only nominally fantasy, the adventure novel-with-a-spin, The Sunbird (1972) by Wilbur Smith. It’s a lost city tale of sorts. The first half of the book is set in modern times and details the trials and tribulations of the search for the lost city of Opet and involves a rich mining executive, his archaeologist friend and the archaeologist’s lovely assistant/girl friend who, not surprisingly, create a problem for themselves in that the rich guy steals the assistant away from the potboy (yeah, I know — bad cheap pun). The twist: the second half of the book is set a couple of thousand years ago in the ancient city of Opet and concerns a strangely familiar cast of characters. Are they the previous lives of the book’s three-some? Or. It’s a bit violent, as Smith’s books tend to be, but it is a romp, certain. Give it a go and see for yourself. Tripping further along the periphery of Fantasyland, we stumble over some books by Arthur O. Friel. He made a six- month exploratory journey up the Orinoco River in Venezuela back in 1922 and used his knowledge of that area to write some fun adventure novels with fantasy elements thrown in for good measure: The Pathless Trail (1922), Tiger River (1923), King of No Man’s Land (1924) and Mountains of Mystery (1925). Of these, I have read only the first two and thoroughly enjoyed them. Jungle adventure, green men, lost races, man/ape hybrids. oh, yeah! They were reprinted in mass market paperback with cover art by Jeff Jones in 1972 by Centaur Press (a small paperback company established by Donald M. Grant and Charles M. Collins. see Wikipedia). All of Friel’s books can be found in the used market, with Pathless Trail and Tiger River being readily available at a decent price. Friel also wrote about his journey up the Orinoco in The River of Seven Stars (Harper, 1924), which is also fun reading. Unfortunately, this book is not so easily found. I was fortunate some years ago to find a copy in a local used book shop and still have it, although it suffered some water damage a couple of years ago. It is still readable, however. The book was never, to my knowledge, published in paperback and the used market has copies of the first (and only) edition priced at $75.00 and up. If you can find a copy, it would be worth the money, but unless you are bent on having a hardcover, a library would be your best bet for this title. WorldCat shows 70 copies in libraries in the U. S., copies in the National Library of Scotland, Trinity College Library of Dublin, Oxford, St. Pancras, Cambridge University and the University of Essex. Copies can also be found in Germany, France and Australia. OK, we’ve stumbled along enough. 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