"Looking eagerly across the water."Front.

THE LOST CHILD.

BY

HENRY KINGSLEY.

"And there he stood, naked and free, on theforbidden ground."

ILLUSTRATED BY L. FRÖLICH.

London and New York:
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1871.

PREFACE.

It is only natural that an author should say a few words about arepublication of this kind. The story in its separate form has theadvantage of being illustrated by an eminent artist, whose specialqualifications are widely known and acknowledged; and it seemed to allconcerned best that it should be left entirely untouched. The first twoparagraphs and the last short one are simply added: no other liberty hasbeen taken with it.

To avoid the trouble of those great plagues of literature, foot-notes,the author asks the reader to submit to a few very triflingexplanations:

[Pg 8]

"Quantongs" are a bush fruit, of about the same quality as greengooseberries, but, like the last-named fruit, very much sought after bythe native youth.

The Bunyip is the native river devil, or kelpie, evidently the crocodileof the Northern Australian rivers, whose recognition by the Southernnatives in their legends shows, if nothing else did, that the centre ofdispersion in Australia was from the North, as Doctor Laing told usyears ago.

With regard to the habit which lost children have of aimless climbing,the author knew a child who, being lost by his father while out shootingon one of the flats bordering on the Eastern Pyrenees in Port Phillip onSunday afternoon, was found the next Wednesday dead, at an elevation[Pg 9]above the Avoca township of between two and three thousand feet.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.