26 APRIL 1902, Page 39

El Ont&i. By W. H. Hudson. (Duckworth and Co. Is.

WI— Mr. Hudson's wonderful and picturesque stories of the Argentine pampas make an admirable second instalment of Messrs. Duck. worth's handy "Greenback Library" series. They transport us to a world of primitive superstition, wild adventure, and dark passion. Much of the tale that gives the volume its title, we are told, is a. true reproduction of the narrative of an old Gaucho with whom Mr. Hudson conversed in the "sixties." But what of Marta Biquelme, the Christian woman, carrims) away by Indians,

whose tragic history ends in her transformation into the mythical Kakne bird ? That is the most marvellous—and somehow, to the imagination, the most convincing—of all the stories. The native setting of scenes and incidents is throughout the volume worthy of the pen of the author of "The Naturalist in La Plata," and when we have said that we have said enough.