BOOK NOTICES.

Evening Star, Issue 7337, 8 October 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

BOOK NOTICES.

Allan Quatermaiuc. Bj^^ycrtTaggard. 'Allan Quatennaine,' the latest novel by Rider Haggard, is not to be mentioned with 'King Solomon's Mines,' is not perhaps equal to ' She,' but a far better story than 'Jess.' The main characters in the first work appear in this-the old hunter Quatermaine, Sir Henry Curtis, and Captain Good. Instead of Umbopa we have Umslopogaas, the fugitive Zulu chief who is the success of the book. Most readers will probably prefer him to Umbopa, as ho is admirably drawn and never loses character from first to last. Fighting is as the breath in his nostrils ; but he fights fair, and one follows him in the hair-breadth escapes of the story with far more interest than we do his civilised companions. He has killed 103 men, not counting the number that he did not have time to rip up, and his slaughter htis all beon accomplished with a marvellously keen - edged axe which the old warrior calls " lukosikaas the Chieftainess." There is, of course, as in all Haggard's novels, a low-comedy character; and in this the part is filled by Alphonse the French cook—a braggart aud poltroon. His introduction is very awkwardly managed. He is dragged in by the heels, so to speak, and never fits into the story. The plot, if it may be so called, is weak. _ There was a logical reason for men braving the desert and the unknown savage country ia order to find the treasures of diamonds and precious stones said to be locked in the heart of the mountains; but here three sensible men, who were old in African travel, start off with a slender outfit into East Africa merely to satisfy antiquarian curiosity and a thirst for adventure. This is absurd on its face, as none of them cared a fig for antiquities; and, as for adventure, they had their fill of it in the other expedition.

The magnificent imagination of the author ! makes one lose sight at times of the absurdities and improbabilities. The story is told with sustained power, and hardly ever flags. Haggard has never done anything better than the introductory chapters, which detail the meeting of Quatcrms.ine and Umslopogaas and the engagement of the Zulu's services, or the account of the desperate early morning surprise of the camp of the Urasai. No one can read the account of this ferocious fight, in which the old Zulu played so prominent a part with his deadly battle-axe, without feeling his blood run more quickly. After this the wildly improbable adventures in the Canyon River and the episodes in the Frowning City seem tame. Another great battle scene, which bears resemblance to the masterpiece of savage warfare in ' King Solomon's Mines,' virtually ends the book, although some fine work has been done in one of the closing chapters, which describes tho last fight made by the old Zulu chief in holding the stairway against the enemy. The love episodes of Sir Henry Curtis and the queens arc coarse, and the determination of such a man to remain in isolation from home and country, as ruler of the kingdom, is highly improbable. Old Quatermaine dies of a wound received in the great battle, so that we have probably seen the last of these characters.

There is perhaps an unnecessary amount of slaughter and gore in the last chapters, as the fight between the sister queens might have been settled without bringing so many men into the field. The style shows signs of haste and carelessness; but it is far better than that of 'Jess.' Like all Haggard's books, ' Allan Quatermaine ' should bo read at a sitting. Only in such a way can a fair idea be realised of its power. It is the highest compliment to Haggard's genius that he makes his readers lose sight for a time of the glaring absurdities of his plot by mere force of a realistic imagination that is without an equal among the novel and romance writers of the period. It may be regretted, however, that he should deem it necessary to exaggerate the faults of 'She,' and to leave this earth in search of the marvellous. With his intimate knowledge of savage life and character, and with power of invention, ho should be at no loss to give the world several stories as full of life and reality as the work that first brought him fame.

The Cruise oflhe. Excelsior. By Brett Harte,

•The Cruise of the Excelsior' will do little to remove the frequently expressed opinion that this most diverting author is incapable of putting his best work into an extended story. The groundwork of the book is the adventures, if such they can be called, of passengers of the barque Excelsior bound from Callao to San Francisco in the year 1854. They are all induced to go ashore at Todos Santos Bay on tho Peninsula of Lower California by a man named Perkins, who is a filibuster in disguise, and who, having control of the crew, steals the vessel and runs away with her. There is a Franciscan mission at Todos Santos and a military post, and the padre and commandant between them have devised and kept up the fiction that they have been shut off from communication with the outer world for some sixty years; that they have not heard of the independence of Mexico nor of the conquest of California. Here the Americans remain for some months, until rescued by a party of their relatives from San Francisco, who have gone South in search of them. The heroine then marries the hero, whose worthless wife, not of the party, lias just conveniently died. The heroine's brother espouses the commandant's pretty sister; the villain of the piece is shot, and all ends in conventional fashion. There is here and there in the story a glint of the genius which Bret Harte has shown in his earlier writings; but for the most part the book decidedly borders on the commonplace. There is a lack of interest beyond the ordinary stock-in-trade of the novelist, and a dearth of that poetic and fanciful sentiment which used to be so marked a characteristic of the author. Too many liberties altogether are taken with the patience and credulity of his readers. For example, reference is made to photographs of Native beauties bought in Callao in 1854, when it is certain that there never was a photograph there until long after that time. In the first chapter he heads the Excelsior for the coast of Mexico with a fair wind and under reefed topsails, and, in the next breath, as he himself puts it: "The Excelsior slowly swung round on her heel, and, with a parting salutation to the coast, bore away to the northwest and the open sea again"—i.e., performed the somewhat marvellous feat of sailing dead in the wind's eye ! Not satisfied, however, with this, the author causes this remarkable vessel to make the run from Cape St. Lucas to Todos Santos Bay—a distance of over 700 miles—in one day, against a head wind ! The whole book, in fact, bears evidence of careless writing, and is not worthy of the reputation of the author. It makes pleasant enough reading, however, for a few idle hours.

The Western Avernus, or Toil and Travel in Further North America. By Morley Roberts. Smith, Elder, and Co., London.

Who Morley Roberts is we do not know. That he is a scholar and an able writer the work before us demonstrates. He tells his readers little directly about himself—only about his doings. His book has no preface explanatory of his object in writing it, nor does the dedication "To my friends the authors of 'Thyrza' and 'The Crystal Age ' " do more than suggest that he is acquainted with and known by a circle of literary men. His narrative commences almost abruptly by a glowing description of "the wide prairie of Texas," on which he stood and " looked around," and found he was "alone." One paragraph that follows throws some little Fight on his previous life, his reason for leaving England, and committing himself to " toil and travel." Ho says ; "My life had been one of many changes. From the North of England to the wide brown plains of sunburnt Australia ; from her again to the furrows of the ocean, for many months of seaman's toil and danger ; then England's greatest city and life, irksome and delightful by turns in her maze and prison ; then ill-health, with all its melancholy train, and sudden feverish resolution to shake from myself the chains I began to loathe. And it was thus I came to Texas, the land of revolution and rude romance, and pistol arbitration." Thus far we understand what led to his leaving England, but it affords no clue to the adoption of the title chosen for his book,

nor will it strike a reader until he has gone through the narrative, in which is detailed a story of privation and suffering beyond what tho most fertile imagination could even picture to itself. There can be no doubt that the writer, however self-reliant, has been somewhat fickle. In America he made no attempt to obtain employment excepting as a laborer, and seems to have been under the impression that in the United States and Cauada a man had but to say that he was prepared to work when he would find work ready prepared for him to do. Go where he would on that vast Continent, in the cities or on the prairies, in the woods or on railway works, on farms or in factories, there were more laborers seeking work than could find it; while living was somewhat dear, wages low, and, as may be gathered from what is already said, employment even if obtained fitful and precarious. Deceived by the loudly vaunted prosperity of the United States and Canada, thousands, nay, tenß of thousands, have emigrated thither of every class of society—men from every nation in Europe ; from China, Japan, runaways from their creditors, escapees from prison, suspected murderers, native Indians, the emptyings as well as the surplusage of eitiea—all rushing about seeking work, and suffering privation and fatigue in their efforts to live. No wonder that this suggested to Mr Roberts's mind a social Avernus into the dark shadows of which, like Ulysses of old, he found himself having enteerd. And this, we apprehend, has suggested the title be has chosen for his book. Prison life, life in lunatic asylums, and various phases of doing and suffering have in these late years found accurate observers through the self-sacrifice and tact of litorary men in their efforts to obtain the necessary knowledge; but tramp life in America has hitherto been a terra incognita. Nor is this surprising. It is seldom that men capable of describing its vicissitudes adopt, voluntarily, physical toil as a mode of obtaining a livelihood. Mr Roberts has, however, lifted the curtain and shown in minute detail the dismal picture. His work should be read by all classes: by the working class that they may be warned against being misled by the theories of the interested or ignorant; by general readers because of the beauty of his descriptions of scenery and his interesting personal adventures ; by the intending emigrant, that he may not rashly leave a comfortable home in a vain attempt to better his condition in an imaginary paradise ; by the statesman and political economist, that he may study one of the problems connected with the evolution of society. The work, to the lovers of reading the record of adventures, has all the charm of a novel. Robinson Crusoe's trials, difficulties, and sufferings were tame compared with Mr Roberts's. He seems to have, with wonderful facility, fallen into trouble, and in many cases had wonderful good luck in getting out of it; at the same time evidently preserving the character, necessarily hidden at times, of a scholar and a gentleman. Lastly, we recommend the study of this work to those loud declaimers of the " Protection League " who have so persistently insisted upon the great advantages of their price-increasing doctrines, by means of which they have raised the costs of living in tho United States. In Mr Roberts's narrative they will find that the high wages they speak of as the result of Protection exist only in their own erratic imaginations; that the truth is, the current rate is just that awarded by the New Zealand Government as test wages of the unemployed—viz., a dollar a-day, and that not a day of eight hours, but from six in tho morning to six in the evening (or twelve hours); and that, in search of this hard-earned pittance, a man, except he be very lucky, has to travel perhaps thousands of miles. The following quotation is an illustration of life in " The Western Avernus ": And I bethought myaelf that I had consumed eight months in travelling; that I had seen much and suff -red much, and rejoicod much as well; and that it was at last time (or tne to stay for a while and gather in sheliMs, il it were in any way piSßible, else it would bo percnniil seed-sowing by the wayside and never a harvest, and no harvest homo with songs of sweet thanksgiving and return. So I said: "If I cm but turn my hand to something in this town (Now Westminster), however humhlo and ill-paid it be, here I will stay, f»r my hialth is better, and it is time I fed my mind with something over and beyond scenery of pints and peaks of cloud and mist and dew, and the wonderful musio of the organic winds of the worldß and the Psalm of Nature to tho unknown God." Therefore, i.ext d <y, when my cvh amounted to 25 cants (2s OJfi). I sought and found work in a saw-mill—-hard ar.d laborious lifting cf timbers, arranging of boards, beading!), ncrollings, si»hes, doors, and what not. Twelve hours a day (our italics), minus one half-hour for a hurried dinner-6 a.m. to 6 p.m., enough for a giant, enough for me, and at first more thnn enough. Board and 30 doV)a-8 a-month for tbis labor, every cent earned, and moro Unn earned, surelv, by sweat and fatigue of muscle, and contact with Chinamen that Btrange, indomitable, pcrsevoring, vile, and wonderful race.

And this in America ! the vaunted paradise of the working classes, according to Protectionists ; but the Western Avernus of those who, deluded by shallow and interested politicians, find to their cost that they have been misled.