Seiners.
Don Duarte's Treasure : a Story of Cape Colony. By H. A. Bryden. (Chapman and Hall. 6s.)—Mr. Bryden has taken old ingredients, but he has mixed them pleasantly. We have all the orthodox details for a romance of treasure-hunting,—.the dead Portuguese noble, the chart, the cache in the mountains, the villain on the trail, and the ultimate triumph of the right. But Mr. Bryden is nearly as tantalising as Mr. Rider Haggard with King Solomon's diamonds, for he makes his hero basely surrender the treasure to the Government and receive a paltry third. This is enough to break the heart of any right- thinking boy. For the rest, the scene is laid on the Western coast of Cape Colony—which is certainly a new departure in fiction—and Mr. Bryden has drawn with great accuracy a very pleasant picture of the better kind of Dutch household. Con- stantia, indeed, is as charming a heroine as we have met with for a long time, and the tale of her unrequited love is the real matter of the plot, the treasure being merely an incident. In a day when many novelists try their hands at a South African novel with varying degrees of incompetence, it is a pleasure to find an author who writes with a true understanding of the country and the people, and never slips in his details. It is not work of the highest order, but it is that thing which many clever people wholly fail to achieve, a good story.
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