TREMENDOUS TREK.

Waikato Times, Volume 119, Issue 19893, 23 May 1936, Page 24 (Supplement)

TREMENDOUS TREK.

j A Wonderful Record. 1i . i, REINDEER FROM ALASKA. t In the nineties, 1,280 reindeer were brought from Siberia to Alaska. 3 ‘ trifling journey it you look at the map. ,To—day they represent a capital \‘aluc lot seven and a~halt million dollars. more than the United States of America ‘paid Russia for Alaska itself. In that g—‘reat wealth the Canadian Government saw salvation for their own Eskimos, starving beyond the Mackenzie River as a result of their own reckless des—truction of game. So they contracted with the Lomen Brothers, owners of some 250,000 reindeer in Alaska, for the delivery, at la price of 205,000 dollars, of 3,000 head at a place agreed in Northern iCanada, a distance over a thousand imiles. : It was then the fun began. The 1 leader was an American, Dan Crowley. land his chief herdsman a middle-aged Lapp, Andrew Bahr. both cast in the heroic mould. The hardships suffered by man and beast on that tremendous trek across the northern wastes, even when read in this straightforward book. can barely be realised. Shortage of fuel for days on end, with temperatures far below zero. left them without tire to brew and cook or thaw their limbs and ironbound i’urs. When they had reached the brink of endur—i once, a scouting Lapp found—a seam or coali That night they had such a bonfire that the Arctic had never seen before. i The journey was over a thousand miles and the time estimated for itl eight months. Actually they trekked; over 5,000, and took five and a-halt‘ years. Of the 3,000 reindeer that; started, only 300 reached their destiua— 1 tion, but the loss had been replaced by ‘ births. and the official dciiyery was‘ 2,370. . —" The Great Trek,“ by Mon Miller.‘ (Lovat Dickson). 1 i SOUTH SEA STORY. i i A Real ' Buccaneer. } i No ordinary words of praise can do ‘ justice to “ Shark Gotch of the Is-‘ lands," for first and last. and all the iime Shark is a character. He ap-‘ neared suddenly among the islands Oil the South Seas—from where no one knew—and beginning his career as a. pirate moves slowly up the ladder of respectability until ‘he ends as His Britannia Majesty‘s Resident‘ Masts: trate on the lawless island of Anea. i His physical attributes include light sandy hair and a wisp or sandy mous- i tache. a cold blue eye. and a hand that 1 never shakes. The chief attachment to ‘ his person is a stubby—nosed revolver, which he draws several fractions of a sccond sooner than his enemies. Butt .\lr \VetJen has refused to make him} infallible. Gotch can be caught out! and occasionally is. Usually. though, he and his bullets are victorious. And, { unorthodox though his code of honour may be, it usually lands him on the right side of the law-abiding and the oppressed. This a story in which incident comes tumbling after incident, in which the hero is magnificently a buooaneer, the glamour of the South Seas is splendidly

—~———.—____.___ captured. It Is a book to he raced through in one breathless hour. “ Shark Gotch of the Islands.“ (Master Thriller Library).