REVIEW.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 4029, 16 January 1875, Page 6 (Supplement)

REVIEW.

The Narrative of Edward Crewe ; or, L>fe in New Zealand. London : Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle. Dunediu : Keith and Wilkie.

The pleasure with -which we should otherwise have read this unpretending little book has been, somewhat marred by the doubt that haunted us from its titlepage to its end—how to treat it. If it is meant for a. work ot pure fiction, many fsreievant and prosaic details are introduced, not, after the manner of Defoe, in e<> artistic a manner as to heighten the fcfiect of the picture, or to enhance the probability of the story, but quite needlessly, .and, it would seem, from pure incontinence of speech. Jf, on the other hand, the author intend* us to accept all tjjafc he tells us as .pure fect.s, then we can only say that we are far too old " colonials" to swallow some cf ?ils yarns. No man who has eyer been on a goldfield would be taken in for ay instant by the story of the disfi'WQvy and the secret working of a fobuwnsly rich quartz reef by the author and his young friend. Yet is there internal evidence enough to warrant she conclusion that the person who calls lijftiself Edward Ore we—evidently an assumed name—has for many years lived And 3?onghed it not far from Auckland. Jc may be fairly said also that, with a iaw exceptions, which we shall point out as we proceed, his descriptions of the natural features of the country—of the birds, trees, and plants—and of the mode of life then and still pursued in the bush, may be depended v pon as accurate by the ■ home-staying reader in England, and will not be uninteresting even to the old colonist to whom the scenery of Auckland may be probably unknown. The iirst chapter, which treats of the pedigree of the Crewes, and other uninteresting matter, may be skimmed over very lightly, or, indeed, may be safely skipped altogether. Nor do we think that the second chapter, which is largely made Tip of extracts from the log-books of the discoverers of New Zealand, need detain the reader long. We have very little patience with this kind of literary padding, which we regard as a species of fraud on the purses and the time of the buyers of the book. But in the third

ohapleSl the fitithor fairly wanna to his work, and, once in the bu3h, throws off his coat and gives us some graphic descriptions of pig-hunting and other New Zealand sports, ending with a photograph' of the bush-grown family .of an eccentric old man of the woods who owned an Auckland saw-mill. The book continues to improve with every page, the account of a voyage up the Thames in a coasting schooner, with the sturdy old Dutch skipper, Janson, being given with a spirit and fidelity that only ihose who have had experience of a cruise in that sort of craft, and with that sort of man, can fully appreciate. Our author is evidently a man of a strong mechanical turn, and has a rare gift for describing woodwork or iron-work. We would give, as instances of this faculty, his clear and accurate account of a Maozi canoe, of the whaleboat he builds with his own hands, and of the log-dam of his saw-mill. Mr Crewe has also thoroughly caught and transcribed the peculiarities of the Maori character—its good humour, its absence of gratitude, its uniform politeness, and its skilfulness in '• playing prp priety" on certain occasions. He tells a capital story about an old Maoriconvert—too long to bequotedhere, but not to be skipped on any account by the readers of the book itself. Our author propounds, quite seriously, the doctrine that it would be better for us whites to adopt the Maori plan whereby the parents or next of kin settle all matrimonial alliances, "Because," he argues, "neither old people nor young ones are the best judges of what is required in the choice of a wedded mate for themselves. Even a doctor rarely prescribes for himself—a man who is his own lawyer has a fool for his client—and at times we even say our prayers by proxy."

We can also commend to the perusal of our readers the narrative of the author's trip to tliQ Great Barrier Island, with a single companion, and in a whaleboat of his own building. Any old settler who has "knocked about" a little will recognise the absolute accuracy of the descriptions of scenery and °f the rude vagabond sort of existence that at one period of our lives lias such charms for most of ug. The legend of the rich quartz reef that oiiy author discovered and actually worked for months without being even suspected, with no better appliances than a onestamper battery of his own manufacture, manipulated by a solitary mate, until he got by his crushjngs more than 14,000 ounces of gold, reads Jikg one of those amusing but apocryphal stories that Mayne Reid was wptit to weave for the edification of boyg. But that friend of boyhood usually paid some attention to probabilities, even when dealing most boldly -with the marvellous. We hardly think even Mayne Reid would have ventured to insult our understandings by asking us fco believe ft.at a man who had jusfc found a reef of quarts containing 25 per cent, of gold, or some QQQQ ounces to the ton, would eoutGiat himself with taking home a modest specimen of a pound weight, while burdening himself at the sani9 time with a back load of half-a-huridped-weight of pork.

We will give rs a fair specimen of the book, but without expressing any opinion whatever as to the truth of the narrative, a story of a se^-serpent :—

Our sport was afc }ast oufc short in an unexpected and alarming manner by my companion, Seth, hooking one of the young of the sea-serpent. He had got the Ijead and some two feet of the monster's body over the gunwale before he or any of us fairly saw tb.g kind of fish that was coming on board of us, The moment, however, Seth did espy the creature, h$ let go his line, thinking perhaps the fish, op whatever it might be, and which appeared so much too big for the boat, would gladly escape. No such thing. On the sea serpent came inlo the boat, 3, fearful-Jooking monster, surely, with expression in his eye. The mobster seem ed to possess the po^er nf elevating and holding its he^d high in the air, for pausing as two-thirds of its length was out of the sea, it tool? a survey of us all, when siiddonly seeing the fish,'it glided bodijy into the boat. I have mention d before that my boat was 29 feet in length, and that five feet at either end were covered in. o>i those elevations we now stood, Soth anclNga Xiii Kiri at the bow, whilst the Maori woc-ian and mys.elf were at tUe stern. Our frightful visitor in the meanwhile liar! possession of all the space amidships, and th|Q iipzt thjug he did \yas to angrily seize a sehnapper ; the fish boing a large onn, and having chanced to die with itg doral fin expanded, he found the sharp spines disagreeable in his mouth. Dropping the fish, he made a snap at the dog, but, luckily for poor Brush, only torg away a little hair. The creature, being under the stats, was to some extent powerless to ris<2. At this juncture, I, having se'zed a tomahawk, struck at tho monster's head, but he dodged the blow, not attacking again in his turn, but simply getting out of the way of danger. Again and again I struck at him, but it was of no use until I watched my chance, as his head wq,a under one of the seats, and he could not well see upward, I struck at him and buried the tomahawk to its handle just behind the creature's head. Upon this' his struggles were dreadful, but I continued blow atter blow with the tomahawk, not always wit]j effect, for he wriggled and flopped about with great vapidity and force, until Seth, getting off his yeveh at the bow of the boat, came aft, and thrusting the }oo:n of an oar down the sea-serpent's throat, so held him whilst I chopped and cut at him, wounding him in fifty plages, nor did I leave off until our horrific visitor iay a bioknning sight, and dead in the bottom of the boijg.

A word as to the author's style before we part. How is it that almost every writer on local subjects in the Australasian Colonies will persist in interlarding his sentences v/ith slang, and with the most slipshod English ? Why should a man like Edward Crewe, who hjijiself tells us phat he was partly educated at Rugby, arid finished by a private tutor, speak of Thomas Aquinas as " the greatest intellectual swell in fche Church." What fun or point is there in calling a girl's father "her paternal parent?" If' ihjs were done from pure ignorance we shall say nothing, but we believe it is done consciously, and wifch malice aforethought, under the impression thq.t it gives the style a sort of local colouring. For our part we should much prefer a neutral tint.