FAMILY GROUP

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 169, 13 April 1935, Page 19

FAMILY GROUP

IN THE FAR NORTH

An Ex-Barber’s Life as Trapper and Hunter ‘‘North of ’53,” by Berham Barker. (London. Methuen). An ex-barber, discharged from the army as medically unfit and classed 03, iiere justifies his assertion that his life ever since has been a living contradiction of professional opinion. ‘‘North of ’s3’’ is an almost painfully realistic record of man’s struggle with Nature. The scene is northern Canada, and gold the most potent line among people whose constant proximity to death gives them a philosophical outlook towards a life of excitement, danger, great privation and hardship, varied by somewhat lurid bursts of crude pleasure. The author became an expert hunter and trapper, and gives interesting firsthand Information on the nature and management of dog teams. He lived on intimate terms with both Indians and Eskimos, and draws comparisons all in favour of fhe latter, whom he regards as kindly, honest and well-intentioned people, whose habits and scale of values, nevertheless, differ widely from the white man’s. A vivid and detailed description is given of a night spent in an Eskimo igloo. The author who, not without reason, describes himself as “hard-boiled” crawled out very hurriedly in the early morning incapable of bearing any longer the—from a white man’s point of view—unspeakably nauseating conditions under which Eskimo family life is carried on. Civilisation seems to have lost all attraction for Mr. Barker, over whom the north has cast a strong and subtle spell. The end of the book finds him in England back at his old trade of barbering, but the reader hardly needs his assurance that it will not be for long. NEW ZEALAND ROMANCE “Oak Uprooted,” a romance of early New Zealand, by Stanley S. Wright. (London: fijheffington, 7./-.) , „ Mr. Wright lias conceived a tale ot romantic adventure which by reason of its subject matter should appeal to many, in spite of the indifference of the writing and the improbability of some of tiie happenings. The chief action occurs in New Zealand, somewhere up the east coast of the North Island where a ship voyaging from England to Australia is wrecked. The survivors include the hero, a transported convict, the man to whom his imprisonment was due, and the latter’s fiancee. They fall in with a Maori tribe, are concerned in tribal warfare, and the hero has his affairs complicated by the attentions of a Maori maid. However, in the end, after various exciting exploits, he secures a pardon, marries his enemy’s intended wife and returns to civilisation and happiness.