Books: Cat's-Paws

FOUR HANDSOME NEGRESSES—R. Hernekin Baptist—Cape & Smith ($2)

In the far-off days when the Portuguese were world's greatest sailors, one of their questing ships picked up four handsome Negresses on the Guinea Coast. According to contemporary chronicles (says Author Baptist) the women were to be dressed up "and left ashore at different points of the African coast as emissaries of trade and, presumably, of Christian missionary enterprise: women, it was reasonably argued, being less likely than men to be slain by savage tribes." From this historical thread Author Baptist has spun a...