'Here we have a collection of short stories of the west coast of Tasmania, principally in the neighbourhood of Zeehan. They are written in good wholesome English, the novel feature about them being that they are supposed to have been told by a venerable black snake. Ordinary readers will probably see nothing very different from a large proportion of tales produced for young people; but the writer of the introduction has discovered concealed under apparently very simple language treasures of profound philosophy and psychology, of which perhaps the author was blissfully ignorant! The stories, however, are interesting, the style chaste, and the descriptive portions accurate. The book has a gruesome frontispiece, and a roughly-drawn sketch map of the West Coast from the Pieman River to the Gordon, and eastward to Lake St. Clair.'
Source: 'Notes on New Books', Launceston Examiner, 10 May 1899, p.3.
