OVER THE HORIZON
MR. TERRY takes us on an enthralling series of adventures. In his faithful Ford, " Lizzie," we traverse desert wastes with him and cross swollen and seemingly impassable rivers, we are introduced to aborigines, hunt alligators, prospect for gold and are rescued from death by starvation in the bush. After three hundred pages of adventure and escape— a talc which might almost vindicate de Rougemont—we almost feel that our own skins are bronzed to the colour of his and our necks too large for the collars of civilization.
The chief merit of this tale lies in its sincerity. Some- times the narrative slips indiscriminately, like a girl who cannot make up her mind, from the first person to the third, but the telling of the story is always candid and simple and bright.
Mr. Terry modestly disowns the title of explorer and describes himself rather as a "traveller who, following the trail blazed by one or two daring spirits, breaks fresh ground in a new way. . . . It is my policy to broadcast to everyone, Australian and Britisher alike, the value and the danger of the unpopulated North of Australia. With overstocked countries dangerously close, no one can justify possession of it indefinitely without development."
This is a vigorous, interesting book which • should do something to stimulate an interest in that vast virgin land, the Australian North, which is capable of yielding enormous rewards to settlers—land, moreover, which may still be had almost for the asking.
Previous page
