Tussock Land is New Zealand, and the impression thoreader of Mr. Adams' story finds uppermost in his mind is that the scenery of the colony is very largely made up of tussocks, so frequently does the word obtrude itself whenever the author lapses into the descriptive mood, which is fairly ofter. Such an impression hardly. does justice to the lovely scenery of the islands, and in the same way the narrative falls short of justice to people who might perhaps have been interesting had their affairs; mainly love affairs, been more skilfully handled. Aroha Grey, the heroine, has some of the blood of the grand old Maori chieftains in her veins, and is the healthy, unaffected, strenuous girl of the "tussocks," charming in her actlessness. In city life, even the small city life of the colony (a more trying ordeal most likely than that of a really great) town she is far less comfortable. King Southern is a not very heroic hero, with the amateur artistic ambitions, the priggishness, and the amativeness of another Wilhelm Meister. Both he and Aroha undergo a series of rather disjointed love adventures between the time that they are I'torally thrown together by a bolting horse, and the moment that "hand in hand, like little children clinging tremulously together before the terrible engimas of life, hand in hand they tursed and wont slowly down the darkening valley."
Tussock Land" will hurt nobody and may be confidently recommended by daughters to their most impressionable of mothers.
Manchu and
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.