Spirit Lake. By Arthur Heming. (Macmillan and Co. 6s.)— This
is a series of North American Indian sketches concerning a "brave" called Standing Wolf and his family. The author contrives to give his readers very vivid and romantic pictures of a winter camp in the hunting-grounds of the extreme North of Canada. What will strike English readers particularly is the extraordinary courage with which the young people of the family of both sexes deal with the awful crises which are constantly overtaking them. The story of the girl Mi-na-ce when she has a hand-to-hand encounter with wolves on the frozen lake makes English readers realise that an Indian girl of thirteen is in a very different stage of development from her English sister of the same ago. Although English children of both sexes would probably bear themselves with great courage as regards the wolves, it may be doubted whether their nerves would stand the awfulness of the utter solitudes into which they have to venture when they go hunting. The romantic and picturesque sides of the life are not the only points on which Mr. Heming dwells. The reader will be amused by the shrewd and cunning way in which the Indians first baffle the pursuing police and then conceal the buffalo robes, which they have illegally taken, by asking the nuns of the post to look after a lodge-covering for them during the summer. Inside, wrapped in the lodge-covering, are, of course, the buffalo robes. The book is a pleasant change after the usual run of modern novels, and its readers will enjoy the glimpses which it affords of a romantic and still primitive world.
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