The Trail of the Gold - Seekers. By Hamlin Garland.
(Macmillan and Co. Gs.)—This is an attempt in verse which recalls Mr. Bret Harte's, and prose which does not quite so readily recall Mr. Rudyard Kipling's, to describe the often tragic adventures of the men whose goal is Klondike. Mr. Garland's ambition is considerable, and there is every reason to believe in his bona fides as a narrator. It would have been in every respect better, however, had he contented himself with telling the undoubtedly interesting story he has to relate with something of the simplicity of his fellow-traveller, who made this entry in his diary : "On 20th concluded to move. Took four days. Very cold. Ther. down to 45 below. Froze one toe. Got claim, now building cabin. Expect to begin singeing in a few days." Instead of matter-of-fact lucidity like this we have such passages as—" At such times the man on the trail feels the grim power of Nature. She has no pity, no consideration. She sets mud, torrents, rocks, cold, mist, to check and chill him, to devour him. Over him he has no roof, under him no pavement." This is, no doubt. absolutely, even painfully, true, but the truth is of a kind which looks far too general for inclusion in what ought to be a graphic report of an actual incident. Mr. Garland's verse errs much in the same way as does his prose. Here and there—as in a really powerful sketch of a cowboy—we have studies in savage realism. But tee often it flops down into commonplace, as in these lines descriptive of the advantages to be derived from the toil of the trail:— "I have broadened my hand to the cinch and the axe, I have laid my flesh to the rain ;
I was hunter, and trailer, and guide ; I have touched the most primitive wildness again."
At the same time Mr. Garland's volume is worthy of the perusal even of those who are familiar with the marvellous Klondike story. The narrative is well arranged in chapters. Mr. Garland has an eye for scenery and a taste for natural history and botany ; and although he is here and there too rhetorical, he is duly impressed both with the sombre nataral grandeur and the human tragedy of what is, after all, a very great subject.
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