sketches of early colonial life which only he can write."--'Review
of Reviews', September, 1895.

* * *


THE BOOK OF THE BUSH.

---------------------

PURGING OUT THE OLD LEAVEN.

While the world was young, nations could be founded peaceably. There
was plenty of unoccupied country, and when two neighbouring
patriarchs found their flocks were becoming too numerous for the
pasture, one said to the other: "Let there be no quarrel, I pray,
between thee and me; the whole earth is between us, and the land is
watered as the garden of Paradise. If thou wilt go to the east, I
will go to the west; or if thou wilt go to the west, I will go to the
east." So they parted in peace.

But when the human flood covered the whole earth, the surplus
population was disposed of by war, famine, or pestilence. Death is
the effectual remedy for over-population. Heroes arose who had no
conscientious scruples. They skinned their natives alive, or
crucified them. They were then adored as demi-gods, and placed among
the stars.

Pious Aeneas was the pattern of a good emigrant in the early times,
but with all his piety he did some things that ought to have made his