Explorer's Temptation

Explorer William Montgomery Brown, who a year ago told "Boston rocking-chair voyagers" of jungaleering in the Amazon hinterland among "a human race so low that other natives call them animal folks, of finding caterpillars tough eating," (TIME, Nov. 22, 1926), told another one in his travel book published last week in London:

"The daughter of one of the leading tribesmen, a girl of 16 or 17, undertook with great zest the task of instructing me in the vernacular. We would sit side by side for hours and a hundred times she would touch my eye, nose and mouth and each time I would have to repeat the native word for it.

"Poor little thing, she seemed to have great interest in the far-away world of the white man, and I could see that she longed to go there. Hidden as we were in the far-off jungle, I began to dream romantic dreams and to think of jungle mating, but the very sweetness and childish charm of the girl brought me back to the world of reality.

"She was of the forest, and her grace and beauty belonged to the forest, while I, for good or bad, belonged to the world of men, and to this I must return. So I contented myself with giving her a photograph of myself-- it was a passport photograph and revealed my beauty--and one kiss."

Londoners were reminded that Explorer McGovern, a regularly authenticated Buddhist priest and not yet 30, was married last April to his cousin.