SOME MODERN BOOKS

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 144, 17 May 1930, Page 6

SOME MODERN BOOKS

FACT AND FICTION. (By Pakeha.”) “Fighting Caravans,” by Zano Grey, is a truly epic historical novel of tho late ’fifties and early ’sixties, describing , the marvellous building up of America’6 Goldon West by the herculean labours and adventurous gestos of the caravan freighters, who, following tho track of the gold prospectors, drove their overland argosies, huge horse-waggons laden with merchandise, arms and ammunition, and their “prairie schooners,” or ox-waggons, to transport their wives and families, streaming by hundreds and hundreds yearly over the Old Red Trail to Santa Fe. It was a marvellous exodus, corresponding closely to the wholesale “trekking” of Boor pioneer settlers northward from Cape Colony towards Zulu-Land and the Transvaal. Even as Boer fought Zulu and Matabele, tho armed American waggon-men fought

Comanche Kiowa and Apache, and as the hunters stalked and slew the buffalo, the Rod men stalked the stalkers, and slew them sometimes in detail, sometimes wholesale; ambushing the waggons-laagers, not seldom, by night, and cutting off whole caravans. The story tolls of tlie iron-hard breed of men, tho product of the rude age, of the genial Colonel Maxwell, the rancher, beloved of Redman and Whitemen alike, and of tho heroic Kit Carson, the cheery, dauntless frontiersman.* In particular, it recounts tho adventures of Clint Belmot and his young sweetheart, May Beil, both alike orphaned by tho massacre of their parents by the Redskins, both passing through long stormy years and perils manifold from savago Indians and no less savago white desperadoes, “The Pirates of the Prairie,” many of them, broken soldiers of America’s great Civil War, who became outlaw and cast in their lot with the Red men and incited them to a thousand deeds of murder and rapirie. Clint, the youthful hero, becomes a frontiersman ot fame, and settles down at last in happy marriage with his faithful maiden, to find rest and peaceful days in a lovely valley down in tho Golden West. With the settlement of the Middle West by the "Covered Waggon Migration,” the homogeneity of the great American nation was horn —the opening of tho Trans-Con-tinental Railway linked up two oceans anU set its iron seal on tho labours of the valiant pioneers, whose fortunes and failures and the mighty development ttiat crowned their tod—Zane Grey has described in so masterly, and indeed, in so truly epic fashion. Two, nay three, new books on Indian jungle-iife. full of picturesque suggestion and, incidentally, or intimate revelation of Hindu community-life and character, have recently appeared. A nutive-horn lludyaru Kipling lias arisen, an Aryan of the Aryans, in the quaintly-named person oi Dhan Gopal Mukerji. The -first is “Giiond Tho Hunter,” the story of a village boy, liis friendship with Purohit, the village priest, and his experiences. with creatures of the woodlands, wild and tame. The second is "The Chief of Tlie Herd,” tho story of a wild elephant, redolent of tho true atmosphere of tho forest, and packed with junglelore. The third is “Gay-i\eek,” ‘'Hie tjtory of a Pigeon,” which in its vivid description of bird-life in the forests ot Sikkhiin, and in the cult of gentleness it insensibly inculcates, is excellently suitable ethically for the study of young tolks. The two first-named, are similar in style in merit and in general scopo to tho Two Jungle Books and to the little volume of “Just So Stories,” which tho adaptable western genius of ICipiing lias made household words amongst our young people at homo and overseas, and a revelation oven to grown-ups grown grey in the service of the British Raj on tho frontiers of Empire. Mukerji’s books have a subtle exotio flavour, an arresting characteristic peculiarity of their own. Expressed in simply chosen, hut quaintlyturned English, they voice a deep love of Nature and breatue a gentle spirit oi kindliness for all God’s wild creatures, ot the sky, tho woodlands and the wastelands, which is the spring whence flows much of the really fine humanity of sentiment, which pervades the best Brahministic teaching and tradition. A rugged romanco of station-life and aboriginal life up-country in the northwest of Western Australia has been recently given us by Katherine Prichard under the title of “Coonardoo.” It is the tragio story of a black girl or “gin,” adopted and brought up with kindness and great care on a big inland station, some 400 miles north of Perth, as the handmaid of “Mrs Bessie,” tho bustling, hardworking widow of the deceased owner of the estate. Coonardoo grows into a graceful, comely maid, and falls deeply in love with the widow’s only son Hugh (“Youie.”) She resists tooth and nail the advances of Geary, the disreputable drunken old owner of a neighbouring estate. (N.B. : Men of the Geary type stil exist, crawling between earth and heaven, but the Aborigines Department has dealt drastically of late with these gentry, and drawn their fangs, and clipped their claws). The poor black girl sees her white lover at length bring home a whito wife, and, with dog-like fidelity, hangs on around the homestead as maid-of-all work and a devoted nurse to his five small girls. Hugh’s wife grows weary of humdrum station-life and its hardships at last and departs with her daughters to enjoy society life at Perth, leaving her husband to bear tho burden and toil and carry on all alone. How the station finally goes to rack and ruin, and how there comes ultimate and blackest tragedy to tho poor devoted native girl, how she returns half-dead from the unspeakable brutalities of tho little low coastal port, whither she has run away in despair, and returns to die at the desolate old familiar hearth of her youth, is a tale too harrowing for words. It paints a frightful picture of man’s inhumanity to man, and of the crude mentalities of rough men’ living on the fringes of civilisation, but the book has extraordinary power of a kind, and the authoress, after her own fashion, has sketched Western Australia and its’ crude back-blocks life, even a 6 Katherine Mansfield and Olivo Schreiner in much more finished form and higher degree of refinement have done for New Zealand and for South Africa. “Orchards,” by Warwick Deeping, has many points in common with “Holmby House,” by the late Whyte Melville. Both alike are romances of England’s great Civil War, and lay their main scene of action around one of the stately homes ol England’s peerless landed gentry, ' who fought so manfully for King Charles. “Orchards” is the residence of Sir Richard Falconer, a lame country gentleman of South Oxfordshire, a strong royalist centre. The time is placed in the earlier part of the war, when, under the crude leadership of Manchester and Waller, thing’s were going none too well for the Parliament, until the entry upon the arena of stout Oliver Cromwell and his men of iron, decided tho appeal to arms in favour of the opponents of His ill-starred Majesty. The heroine, a beautiful wayward motherless girl, daughter of a stern old country squire, Sir Richard’s neat’, neighbour, falls into sad disgraco with her father owing to her flirtations. She receives a terrible beating, and her . stern sire threatens to turn her out of doors. Sir Richard, in pity, to save her good nnmo, offers to marry her. llow, as mistress of that glonous country mansion, she shows perversity and ingratitude and sorely tests her husband’s patience and loyalty, and long keops up an intriguo with the worthless, flashy Colonel Windibank; how at length she grows to despise him and respect and love her husband is a story of thrilling interest. Windibank at last turns traitor ana goes over to Parliament, and out of pure rovengo visits “Orchards” and with a force of cavalry, lays it waste and threatens Lady Falconer with violence. A party of Royalist horse arrive in the nick of time to save the lady and the fine old mansion. Just as tho reconciliation is perfect, orders arrive from tho King to Sir Richard and his soldiers to return and tako part in the pending battle at Croproady. Bridge in tho Ch'crwell, where Sir Richard falls gloriously in the hour of victory, leaving his repentant wife disconsolate with tho consciousness that the martyrdom of her love was part of the righteousness of things, and not without a gleam of consolation in tho reflected glory of a death so noble, a love so faithful and tender of a true, a great-hearted gentleman..