Stirring Tales of Colonial Adventure. By Skipp Borlase. (Frederick Warne
and Co.)—Australia, Hindos tan, even New Guinea, have been pretty well explored in the past by the seekers after exciting adventures for boys. Yet Mr. Skipp Borlase- who, one cannot but believe, is personally more familiar with Australia than with any other of the regions he deals with in this volume—has managed to give freshness and individuality to all but one or two of his shorter stories, which have rather a. "magazine padding" look. The two first stories," The Manager at Cooinda," and " The Black Bloodhound "—it should be unneces- sary to say that they are both Australian—are, all things con- sidered, the best in the volume. There is positively the crack of Charles Wade's whip in "The Black Bloodhound," which tells of the compulsory emigration to Australia of Bessie and Tom Harper and Archie Gray, in the days when England was "a country wherein a young fellow who was fond of his rod and gun might- get fifteen years of penal servitude for landing a trout or shooting a pigeon." Tom's escape from what is worse than a prison, with the help of the black bloodhound and the con- nivance of the young man who has injured him, but is in love with his sister, is in truth delightfully told. As we have already said, we like Mr. Borlase's Australian stories better than any of his others. But the persistent Indian fanatic who figures in "Lured to Their Doom," is a weirdly fascinating personality ; and the adventures set forth with much humour in "The Blue Noses," demonstrates that their author can, when he chooses, make himself at home in the most northerly regions of North America. Altogether, this is one of the strongest and most original books for boys that have been published for many a day.
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