BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVII, Issue XX, 16 November 1901, Page 956

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

"THE WARRIGALB’ WELL.” Donald Macdonald, the Australian war correspondent, whose account of the siege of Ladysmith had such a brilliant success, and who won golden opinions for himself as a lecturer in Auckland as elsewhere, has just published a novel of adventure in North Australia. The book was written just before the outbreak of the Boer war, and does no discredit to the author of "How We Kept the Flag Flying.” It is full of life and colour, and every page breathes of the true spirit of adventure. Consequently, whatever charges might be brought against it, lack of interest could never be one. But, indeed, there is little in the book to which exception might be taken, beyond certain crudities of plot and execution; and these are easily accounted for and excused by the statement that out of a feeling of delicacy, since his collaborator, Mr J. F. Edgar, had died soon after the novel was written, Mr Macdonald had not revised or altered the M.S. in any way before publication. A minute observation of nature as she appears in the great Never Never Country, coupled with graphic powers of description, enable the authors to make the reader realise that little-written-about part of the great Island Continent; and a good many anecdotes, blazing with local colour, find their way, more or less relevantly, into the tale of the things that happened to Jasper Meredith and his friend, Allan Ogilvie, in their hunt for gold and opals. In addition to the hero and sub-hero, there is a very accomplished villain in the story, and, towards the last, two heroines come upon the scene in time to be led to the altar, and so furnish the pleasing orthodox finish to a tale that up to then deals with every passion except the tender one.