Evening star., 1935-04-06
THE LIBRARY TABLE
BY SARAH C.. BOWERMAN.

MAKING THE BRUSH BEHAVE.
Fourteen Lessons in Water Color
Painting With Twenty-nine Illus
trations. BY Eliot OEIara. New
York: Minton, Balch g. Co.
Like the authors earlier book,
Making Water Color Behave" this
Is the result Of his experience In
teaching water color technique in
courses given throughout the coun-
try, but especially in the Eliot O'Hara
School Of Water Color Painting,
Goose Rocks Beach. Me. "As nearly as
is possible. through printed type and
without demonstration, also without
the advantage of questions by the
student, 1t tells how certain effects
may be obtained with the brush and
colors." Those who have seen Mr..
O'Hara's own paintings, exhibited in
Washington on different occasions,
know the unique effects he himself
succeeds in making brush and colors
produce. His books are such clear
and practical hand books, demon-
strating by description, diagram and
drawing, the steps in making a water
color, that 1t seems as though the
completely uninitiated might be able to
make a passable water color simply
by following directions. "A water
color should not take more than an
hour of intensive work." but during
that hour many steps must be taken
and taken correctly If the finished
result is to be satisfactory. Mr..
O'Hara first tells the materials re-
quired, then gives six exercises in
brush drill and follows with chapters
on values, warm and cool color, tree
strokes, the spectrum, naturalization,
lighting, recession into space, reflec-
tions in water, memory sketching and
changes in color and light. With hu-
morous appreciation, the book is ded-
icated to his wife. Shirley Putnam
O'Hara, who made the text behave"
TO NOVA SCOTIA. The Sunrise
Province Of Canada. BY T. Nor
ris Longstreth. New York: D. Ap-
pleton Century Co.
A thorough but not at all formal
account of personal travel, this book
of Mr.. Longstreth covers the whole
province OF Nova Scotia, both the
mainland and the island Of Cape
Breton. With an elderly and original
companion. DR.. Urbanus Weagle. Mr..
Longstreth started from Halifax and
went down the south shore to Ches-
ter, Lunenberg, Liverpool. where they
caught a big tuna; Shelburne and
Yarmouth, at the turn OF the penin-
sula. They then worked along the
north shore to Digby, Annapolis Roy
al, Grand Pre-, in the Evangeline
country; Pictou, first settled by Phil
adelphians. and across to Cape Bret
on, with its Cabot Trail and Bras
dor Lakes. The book would be just
the right accompaniment to a holi-
day in Nova Scotia, for il gives abun-
dant information very pleasantly and
with occasional humor and philoso-
phiZing.
LOOSE AMONG DEVILS. BY Cor
don Sinclair. New York: Farrar
g. Reinhart.
However narrowing his title or his
tale, no one need extend sympathy
to Gordon Sinclair. He likes devils, as
he liked cannibals when he went in
search of them and then wrote Can
nibal Quest" and whatever he finds
when he goes into anthropological
monstrosities in exotic places is always
below his hopes. He is Unsuitable for
sensations and doesn't care for them
secondhand, as most of us do, but
must dig them up for himself from
jungles and deserts and lonely islands
and buried primitive communities and
penal colonies, or any other places that
seem to him promising. This time he
went, backed by the newspaper which
he represents, to the notorious penal
colony of Devils Island; then, in a
second jump. to West Africa to study
voodoo and black magic and to hunt
for the lost Canadian Presbyterian
missionary, William Thompson.
The actual Devils Island is only "a
dinky bit of rock and trees smaller
than turnip field" and gave hospi
tality in March, 1882, to only six pris-
oners. But the whole colony of
French Guiana, over which the black
vulture of death broods and breeds is
known to the world as Devils Island"
When his airplane left him in French
Guiana and went on to Brazil, Mr..
Sinclair's spirits went into a tall
spin" but soon recovered when he be-
gan the investigations for which he
had come. From his account of the
| lot of the inhabitants of this French
convict colony. "ForSake all hope"
must be its motto. OF the 10000 peo-
pie in the colony, about half are either
| convictS or ex-convicts, and according
to Mr.. Sinclair the second are little
happier than the first. Escape with
recapture means the guillotine
Mr.. Sinclair went by boat to the
Gold Coast and made his plunge into
the jungle from Lagos, the Nigerian
capital. At Devils Island he saw the
dregS left in the sieve Of civilization;
here he saw the murky stream which
had never been put through the sieve
1t was less horrible, but fantastic and
often bloodcurdling enough. Methods
Of poisoning refined enough for the
Borgias. the practice Of the juju from
e distance of hundreds of miles, hu-
man sacrifices, jungle juStice-of all
these and other things he learned
enough to satisfy his quest for the
weird. One experience he had which
he did not seek, when a black mamba,
seized by a hawk, which crashed into
the windshield of his car, was dropped
| through the hole In the glass straight
into his lap. 1t Is wholesome for ex-
plorers to have some adventures they
are not looking for.
HELL-HOLE OF CREATION. The
Exploration of Abyssinian Danakil.
BY L. M. Nesbitt. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf.
The Eritrean Danakil region Of
Abyssinia. a strip of coast about 40
miles wide, extending along the shore
of the Red Sea from Massowa to
Asab. Is governed and policed by
Italy; but the untouched Danakil''
lies to the west, within the borders of
AbySsinia, and is scorching desert
waste, much of it an old sea bed below
the level of the Red Sea. Three differ
ent expeditions, before this of Mr.