Beyond the Argentine. By May Frances. (W. H. Allen and
Co.)—A lady has in this little volume recorded her six months, experience of " up-country " life in Brazil, on one of the branches of the Uruguay. She joined her brother, who was district engineer on a pioneer railway, and who does not seem to have pos- sessed good health. Both seemed to have enjoyed it, for the brother came to take more care of himself ; and the sister, being of a hardy and thoroughly English type of womanhood, and a good horsewoman as well, did not find the loneliness and hardships of her life unbearable. The writer's observations on the scenery, the life of the estancias, and the people generally, together with that heed of details which men usually omit, give one a fairly lifelike and truthful impression of the sort of existence the South American colonist may look forward to. For a lady, it seems a solitary existence (the writer was twenty miles from the nearest English family), but the hardships she suffered would not be considered unbearable by a reasonable English matron. " May Frances" astonished the few Brazilian ladies whom she met, doubtless by her energy. The quiet, humdrum life which these isolated estancieros and their families lead should reassure even the most nervous of mothers. The example of the writer fur- nishes a very useful and truthful precedent for those who desire some communication with emigrant relatives.
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