BURIED TREASURE AND ROMANCE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23263, 4 February 1939, Page 1 (Supplement)

BURIED TREASURE AND ROMANCE

"Land of the Lost"

By MATANGA

NO New Zealander has a right to consider himself really one until, to every other proud virtue, he adds a due regard for kauri sum. He may not aspire to know all about it—that is for experts—but he must give this remarkable product of his country's soil an attentive respect above that paid to many other things. It is entitled to this,, by virtue of much m ore than its share in helping the oeople of these islands to earn a living and pay their way m the world. That help has been great. For many rears it was greater than gold,could contribute. It was destined to be eclipsed by other means of wealth, but the tale of its money-making is fit to be told alongside the record of the doings of wool kings and butter barons. This tale belongs, by right of natural endowment, to the northern peninsula of this island, yet the handicap of narrow area could not keep it from distinction among stories of commerce. There was a time when, as far away as London and Berlin and New York, it was both familiar and famous. Ahead of Gold

In 1898, to take a useful year of comparison, the total output of kauri rum for the period beginning in 1853 had reached a value of £9,099,627, whereas the gold won in the provincial district, although starting only four rears behind, had not even then caught . —its figyre was £5,715.729. A commodity worth half a million a year had no need to hide its face in the colonial .market. There have been many years of humbler deeds since then, but the facts remain. The achievements of "gum." usually 'registered without fuss in the economic history of our little country, are therefore to be 'esteemed. But there is far more than its merchanting to make this commodity worth thought. Even when technical research and industrial arts and commercial statistics have had their say the tale is scarcely begun. In every little bit of the golden transparency lurk interests that may well engross and stimulate the mind. Immensities open through that golden gate —the vista of long centuries through which grew to majesty trees of- unsurpassed stature, the stretching sylvan corridors flanked by their impressive boles, the • lifting of their crowned tops to the depthless sky, the stalwart witness borne to Nature's tranquil, ..confident might. Earth has few appeals so calling to nobility of heart. Welcome Reprint

All this, and more, are broucht to mind by the re-issue of Mr. William Fafchell's book "The Land of the Lost: A tale of the New Zealand Gum Country." More than twenty-five years iare passed since it was first published, and that was long before "The Greenstone Door" came from his skilful pen. to be reprinted lately. The time was fully ripe for these amends to a generation knowing little of the strength and charm of these books.

Taste may dictate which of them, not to mention at least one other of Mr. SatcheJl's stories, shows their author at •his best, but none, having read either, can doubt for a moment the merits that have won him a high place as a writer of New Zealand fiction; and the joy of this literary judgment is that he has not scorned to embody truth in a vivid, romantic tale. Only by a streteh of courtesy can «ome novels by New Zealanders about New Zealand be described as New Zealand books. Their themes, whether sex or society or what not, might have h°en placed with equal facility in any of several British lands. The location obviously matters less than the movement of the story. Place-names, descriptions of localities, even the introduction of a few historical personages, may provide a New Zealand setting; but it is never more than a setting—it has no efficiently vital relationship to the action. "Atmosphere" is palpably added, by certain tricks, more or less adroit; it does not breathe in the story but is breathed, with pauses for recovery of artistic breath, upon it. Mr. Satchell's genius is not of that lesser sort.

A Virile Story

In "The Land of the Lost" he has been at no pains to reach a wider paying public by offering a general-utility plot with local trimmings. To do so might have been worldly-wise, but it is safe to say that the discriminating, everywhere, will see and prize the better work he preferred to do. •The story—but no, that is for you to get from Mr. Satchell. Enough here to wy that it moves, that it is alive, that it grows from its people naturally, that it is made by them rather than constructed with situations into which they ara to fit, and that it matches in interest any manufactured "thriller." Given the gumfields as they have actually been, attracting all sorts and conditions of men but especially those ?t a loose end in life, what happens is just what would happen, did happen, ttith certain of them thrown together in certain circumstances.

As-for the characters, they, too, are trtip to life. Yet in choice of types —-a Matter in which every novelist has his supreme opportunity—Mr. Satchell makes unerring selection, so that their reaction to surroundings and each other proceeds without a producer's anxious interference. Again, tempting as is the Possibility of proving this by critical analysis, his tale must bo left to speak for itself. "King of the Diggers" . Most readers wili probably be alertly interested in "the King of the Diggers," cleverly aware of the best spots fo seek buried gum, keenly visioned in knowledge of what the stricken tracts *®re like before the forest was overthrown, and gifted with apt phrase. Hi» audible musing uplifts: "It's a wonder*ul place this;, huge trees all around us, fi nd in among them the saplings springing up straight and clean, bound a, life of a thousand years' dura"On. Listen! You can hear the wind a niong the leaves like a spent wave." How well he talks, because his inner *?e is c l ear /anc j ] m language simple, HjM the giant "King of the Bush"! '•hen he was young he entered into Partnership with the sun. and from wjat l] our t j ie ear t], am ] the sky were ] s to draw upon. God gave him an ? Tnfty of time, and slowly, hour bv °" r i century by century, he rose up of the ground and stretched hime among the clouds." . «nd all such thought, with the sinis.er and the sordid that are cheek by i°wl with it upon the gumfield, is part SfV P arcp l of the tale. You cannot a«e anything away without destroying whole. '