Perils in the Transvaal and Zululand. By the Rev. H.
C. Adams, M.A. (Griffith, Ferran, and Co.)—This is as good a story of the South African kind as we have read, and that is saying not a little. The possibilities and the impossibilities in it are equally delightful. Any author has quite a right, when he is on the enchanted ground of Mr. Rider Haggard, to invent huge snakes, and Dutchmen so huge that snakes cannot comfortably crush them, and lions that allow themselves to die because their whiskers are Binged off. But he is also boned, when he is dealing with genuine incidents in English history—such as the Zulu and Transvaal Ware—to be reasonably true to history. Both of these things Mr. Adams hue done in his new volume, in which he narrates the experiences of some gallant Englishmen of the adventurous type—and of at least one Dutch. man, Vander Hayden, who is worthy to be considered their equal in all respects, physical and moral—in South Africa daring that trying, if not terrible period which began with Iaandhlwana, and can hardly be said to have ended with Majuba Hill. The defence of Rorke's Drift is reproduced, and very admirably reproduced, and Mr. Adams goes so far as to confer on his pet Englishman, George Rivers, and his pet Dutchman, Vander Hayden, the privilege of arresting Cetywayo. Then there is a mutiny at sea, and an attack on the heroee of the story by land, in both of which there figures as what, in Miltonio language, may be termed the "superior fiend" of the story, one Cargill, alias Boatock, who wishes to murder Mr. Vander Hayden and to marry Miss Vander Hayden. Mr. Adams further reproduces Zulu hietory, and gives once more in breui *patio the old stories of Panda and Chaka and Dingan. Altogether, this is an ambitious work ; but the ambition in it is justified by the perform- ance. If it is due to the author to say that it is a good book, it is also due to the publishers to say that it is a remarkably handsome one.
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