Book Reviews PIONEERING LIFE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 70, 23 March 1940, Page 8 (Supplement)

Book Reviews PIONEERING LIFE

TAMES Cowan's "Settlers and J Pioneers'' the second to be published of the New Zealand Centennial surveys, was written, as its author remarks, out of his "own knowledge and experience on the border of settlement and from the human documents that. unlike a book, could be crossexamined . . ." Therein lies its value—and it will be an enduring value. Mr. Cowan has not written a systematic history of the settlement of Xcw Zealand; he has written, for the most part, of what he knows, and his knowledge is wide and intimate. He knew, in particular, "the frontiers,'' wiiich were the Upper Waikato, the King Country borders, Taranaki, and the Bay of Plenty. H« knew, and knows, the Maoris as only a few others have known them —"the Xgati-Mania-poto and Waikato, and their kindred are as much my own folk from my earliest years as any of my pakeha." Such intimate knowledge might have produced only a book of reminiscences, of which Mr. Cowan has a real store, but he has endeavoured, and successfully, to give this contribution to the Centennial surveys a wider and deeper interest. A generation has grown up which hears conventional tributes paid to "the pioneers" without knowing and appreciating, or greatly caring about, the - conditions under which they lived. And, in truth, sonic nooks about the pioneers have been dull t> yawning point, while others have been distressingly sentimental. Xo one will say that Mr. Cowan's book is dull, and it is not his nature to sentimentalise. He looks back on the days of pioneering settlement to a life which was "less anxious and more i spacious." It was a hard life, we are , often told. Mr. Cowan knows it, but he would add that tlic pioneers also had a lot of fun, and that the proportion of j plaster saints amongst them was no greater than among ourselves. So in this book the reader is not invited to I learn about those near-abstractions called "pioneers;" he is enabled to live among men and women to feci and see what they felt and saw. As here: That first night in the bush was vividly remembered by the new-chum family long after late memories became blurred by familiarity. It was their first night witli the mosquitoes. "Those

• James Cbwaris Survey. awful stiming flies!" was the first complaint as evening came down, 'the settler neighbour had not thought of advising them': to provide themselves with mosquito netting before they left tow.. lliish-seasoncd himself, he did not feel the need, of it. .Some newcomer*, after one tasle of the mosquito in\ ri.Mls—or rather one taste of their blood by the mosquitoes—made muslin hags with draw-strings to cover their heads anil shoulders at night. All the micron of llunua gathered to the feast. The "stinging flics" at any rate kept the fainify so busy that the strange, deep silence of the forest and now and again the sharp cry of the wekn, or the mournful call of the morepork, failed to startle, or depress them. Morning came at last, and with it relief. I'orest voices, the harsh ka-ka of the big parrot, and the chttnk-choo of the ttii, clear a- glass, echoed from near and far along the forest edge. There were hell-notes dropping from the darkness of the trees. All the pioneers were not farmers. There were surveyors, bushmen, railway builders, goldminers, punt men, blacksmiths, doctors, parsons. Only one who lived the life as Mr. Cowan lived it could appreciate the part that each played in the days of settlement. They fall naturally into Mr. Cowan's narrative, with many a personal experience or humorous story to illustrate their work and character. This book (published by the Internal Affairs Department) is one to read for pleasure, and then to keep for reference when any question arises of "what it was like in those days." + + + + From the Publishers. FICTION. We Band of Brothers, by "Seaforth": The Vengeance- of Laroso, by Arthur Cask (Herbert Jenkins). Yesterday's April, by luetic I S. Macu.l- - Arizona Jim, by Charles Aldcn Seltzer (Hodder and StoUfrhlon). NON-FICTION. Settlors and Pioneers, by James Cowan (Internal Affairs Department). Following Christ, by Dr. W. n. Matthews (Longmans). The Mother (a play), by Karel Capek (Allen and Unwln). The Inner Life, by C. F. Andrews (IloUder and StougMon). I was Stalin's Agent, by \V. G. Krivltsky (Hamish Hamilton). The Trial of George Buchanan, by James M. Aitken (Oliver and Boyd). N.Z. Society of Accountants, Year Book, 1938-39. Essays of a Biologist, by Julian Huxley: Letters of Gertrude 8011, edited by Lady bell; Belief and Action, by Viscount Samuel; Philosophy and Living (0 vols.), by Olaf Staple-ton; Tho Eightoon-Nineties, by Hollirook Jackson; Working Class Wives: Their Health and Condition, by Margery Spring-Hlcc (Pelican Books). British Birds; A Book of Roses (King Penguin Books).

SHORTER NOTICES. "Plants oi New Zealand," by R. M. Laing and E. W. Blackwell. Wbltcombe and Tombs. The fourth edition of the standard work on New Zealand flora. Additional species described include "the greatest novelty of recent rears," Xeroncma Collistemon, first described by Dr. W. R. B. Oliver from the Poor Knights Mauds, and since discovered by Misses L. jr. Cramvoll and L. B. Moore, of Auckland, in the Hen ajid Chickens Group. The illustrations, some in colour, include hundreds of photographs. + + + + "How War Came." l>.v Raymond Gram Swing (Nicholson ami Watson). The B.li.C.'s regular commentator on American affairs here publishes a selection of the 'broadcasts he made for American listeners over the period from March 0, 19;S!>. until the outbreak of war. Printed without alteration, they are remarkably free from serious error. "I was, wrong" (the author admits in a preface) "in not appreciating how determined Hitler had been since May to make war on Poland. I thought he was ready to try the Munich technique + + +■ + "Portrait of a Young Man." by Franklin Lushingtou (Fa her and Bnber). Colonel Lushington was young before the war of IDU-IS. His reminiscences, well done, will produce a feeling of nostalgia in readers who knew the kind of life he describes; lint it is not clear why .they should be published now. + + +• + "The Poller's Wheel: Thoughts on the Ways of Cod with .Men," by Canon J. O. Haniiny (Longmans). Canon Hannay, better known as George A. Birmingham, "brings together in the book "thoughts derived from talks with friends, from his own reading of Holy Scripture and from meditation." + + + + Man Alone, by John Mulgan, Sclwyn and Blount. In this novel, the author's first, we have a picture of Xcw Zealand life as seen through the unimaginative eyes of an "under-dog," who is also a rolling stone. Johnson, the "man alone," has no defined ambition, but he has a negative tenacity which he needs when he falls foul of the police (in the Auckland : riots) and later when to escape arrest for manslaughter lie "goes bush" in the • Kaimanawas.' Eventually he escapes'to England and then drifts off to fight in ; Spain. This story, though restricted in interest, has been admirably told. Mr. ; Mulgan writes in the. Xew Zealand vernacular more convincingly than most other Xew Zealand novelists, and in an age in which-there is much over-writing, he is consistently unemotional, economical and lucid.