Capricornia

TO THIS prize novel of life in Northern Australia, Mr. Herbert brings an accurate ear, an attentive eye, and a richly varied personal experience. The early settlers of Capricornia were much like the Forty-niners in California — brawling, boisterous, sentimental, hard-drinking individualists who lived casually and died hard. Out of the welter of people — English officials, native whites, half-eastes, and hard cases of all nationalities — gradually emerges the figure of No-name, or Nawnim, or Norman, the hero. And with him comes the principal theme of the book — the perplexities that mixed races always produce.

Capricornia has humor, pathos, and tragedy. For burlesque in the grand manner, the Callow-O’Cannon wedding celebration — what old Tim O’Cannon called the “noopshals" — has few parallels in recent literature. The novel teems with people and anecdotes. If prodigality in the use of material is any criterion of the stature of a book, then Mr. Herbert has written a tremendous one.