The Rougemont Romances,

Evening Post, Volume LVI, Issue 74, 24 September 1898, Page 2 (Supplement)

The Rougemont Romances,

9 M. Louis de Rougemont is probably the moat-tulked-of ex-colonial now in England. His name has several times within the lust fortnight been flashed across the cables in connection with his presentation of remarkable papers upon Australian exploration at the session of the British Association. What these may have been like we shall not know for some weeks, when the mail will no doubt bring particulars. But when tho last newspapers left England he had already given the British public a taste of hia quality as a story-teller. The following is quoted from the Home Nowb : — AN ASTOUNDING NABBATIVE. The Wide World Magazine has secured one of the moat extraordinary sensations of recent times in the person of a wonderful Frenchmon — M. Louis de Rougemont by name — who has only just returned to civilisation, after having been cast away for thirty yeara among the cannibal tribes of unexplored Australia! M. de Rougemont landed in England penniless, and was sent to the editor of the Wide World Magazine by a very distinguished member of Parliament. Away back in the sixties, young De Rougomont went pearling with a Dutchman in the South Seas, was wrecked, and was thrown upon a desert island in the Sea of Timor. Thia 'island,' far from being the gorgeous tropical paradise of one's imagination, was a mere epit of sand, a hundred yards long, ten yards wide, and eight feet above high- water mark. How the unfortunato man was able to keep his reason in this appalling prison must be read to be realised. His sermons in a loud voice to his dog ; his acrobatic performances from the roof of his pearl-shell house ; his unique crops of corn, sown in a puddle of turtle's blood ; his messages despatched out into the unknown by means of pelicans ; his frantic transports of joy at the sight of an elusive sail ; his riding on turtle- back in the lagoon, guiding his strange steeds by placing his toes in either eye, according