Chapter 9

Edited by Horace Kephart

Here are brought together for the first time the great stories of adventure of all ages and countries. These are the personal records of the men who climbed the mountains, penetrated the jungles, explored the seas and crossed the desert; who knew the chances and took them, and lived to write their own tales of hardship, endurance and achievement. The series will consist of an indeterminate number of volumes—for the stories are myriad. The whole will be edited by Horace Kephart. Each volume answers the test of these questions: Is it true? Is it interesting? The entire series is uniform in style and binding. Among the titles now ready or in preparation are those described on the following pages. Price $1.00 each, net. Postage 10 cents extra.

IN THE OLD WEST, by George Frederick Ruxton. The men who blazed the trail across the Rockies to the Pacific were independent trappers and hunters in the days before the Mexican war. They left no records of their adventures and most of them linger now only as shadowy names. But a young Englishman lived among them for a time, saw life from their point of view, trapped with them and fought with them against the Indians. That was George Frederick Ruxton. His story is our only complete picture of the Old West in the days of the real pioneers, of Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, Bill Williams, the Sublettes, and all the rest of that glorious company of the forgotten who opened the West.

CASTAWAYS AND CRUSOES. Since the beginning of navigation men have faced the dangers of shipwreck and starvation. Scattered through the annals of the sea are the stories of those to whom disaster came and the personal records of the way they met it. Some of them are given in this volume, narratives of men who lived by their hands among savages on forlorn coasts, or drifted helpless in open boats. They range from the South Seas to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, from Patagonia to Cuba. They are echoes from the days when the best that could be hoped by the man who went to sea was hardship and man’s-sized work.

CAPTIVES AMONG THE INDIANS. First of all is the story of Captain James Smith, who was captured by the Delawares at the time of Braddock’s defeat, was adopted into the tribe, and for four years lived as an Indian, hunting with them, studying their habits, and learning their point of view. Then there is the story of Father Bressani who felt the tortures of the Iroquois, of Mary Rowlandson who was among the human spoils of King Philip’s war, and of Mercy Harbison who suffered in the red flood that followed St. Clair’s defeat. All are personal records made by the actors themselves in those days when the Indian was constantly at our forefather’s doors.

FIRST THROUGH THE GRAND CANYON, by Major John Wesley Powell. Major Powell was an officer in the Union Army who lost an arm at Shiloh. In spite of this, four years after the war he organized an expedition which explored the Grand Canyon of the Colorado in boats—the first to make this journey. His story has been lost for years in the oblivion of a scientific report. It is here rescued and presented as a record of one of the great personal exploring feats, fitted to rank with the exploits of Pike, Lewis and Clark, and Mackenzie.

ADRIFT IN THE ARCTIC ICE-PACK, by Dr. Elisha Kent Kane. Dr. Kane was connected with one of the numerous relief expeditions which went north in the middle of the last century, sailing from New York early in the spring of 1849. They found themselves caught in the ice of Lancaster Sound early in the fall and spent the entire winter driving to and fro across the Sound frozen fast in the ice-pack. Dr. Kane’s narrative gives the most vivid and accurate account that has ever appeared of ship life during an arctic winter. He contributes many important observations as to ice and weather conditions. His picture of the equipment and provisions makes rather strange reading in the light of our modern development for exploration purposes.

THE LION HUNTER, by Ronalyn Gordon-Cumming. The author was an Englishman who was among the first of the now numerous tribe of sportsmen writers. Going out to South Africa in the early half of the last century he found a hunting field as yet untouched; antelope roamed the plains like cattle on a western range and lions were almost as numerous as coyotes in the old cattle days. In the course of his wanderings with the handful of natives, he penetrated the far interior of Africa and finally encountered Livingston. His account of his experiences with dangerous game armed only with the old-fashioned muzzle-loaded rifles makes the exploits of modern sportsmen seem almost puny in their safety.

HOBART PASHA, by Augustus Charles Hobart-Hampden. Recollections of one of the most remarkable men of the 19th century. He served in the English Navy from 1835-1863, after which he engaged in blockade running in the interest of the Confederacy, in the prosecution of which he had many close shaves but was never caught. He then entered the Turkish navy, built it up and fought against the Russians. The whole book is filled with thrilling adventures and narrow escapes.

ADVENTURES IN MEXICO, by George Frederick Ruxton. This volume describes Ruxton’s second visit to America, but this time he landed at Vera Cruz, from where he went to Mexico City and thence north to the American border. Mexico was then at war with the United States, bandits roamed over the country right up to the gates of the capital, and Indians infested the northern part. Still he made the journey of 2,000 miles, often alone, experiencing many exciting adventures.

WILD LIFE IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS, by George Frederick Ruxton. A continuation of Ruxton’s ADVENTURES IN MEXICO, from Chihuahua north. In the course of his journey he had to pass through treeless deserts, where he suffered much from lack of water; spent the winter in the Rocky Mountains and finally crossed the United States boundary.

*THE GOLD HUNTER, by J. D. Borthwick. He was an English artist who joined the rush of treasure seekers to California in 1851. It is a lively description of the voyage via Panama, of San Francisco from its days of the bowie-knife and top-boots to its development into an orderly community, of life (and death) in “the diggings” and of the motley gathering of all nationalities in town and camp, their toil, sports, virtues, crimes and shifting fortunes. The book covers the period from 1851-1856.

GREAT DIVIDE, THE, by Earl Dunraven. Sport and travel in the Upper Yellowstone in the summer of 1874 with George Kingsley and Texas Jack. Stalking the wapiti and bighorn, encounters with grizzlies, camp life at its best and worst, Indians and frontiersmen, the joys of wild life and the pathos of it, the crest of the continent and the vales of “Wonderland,” all are depicted by the Earl of Dunraven.

LIFE AMONG THE APACHES, by John C. Cremony. He was interpreter of the United States Boundary Commission and served against the Indians as Major of a California regiment during the Civil War. His personal encounters with the Apaches were of the most desperate nature.

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:absinthe, curaçoa=> absinthe, curaçao {pg 72}they got the length=> they go to the length {pg 78}Kadiak Island, Alaska=> Kodiak Island, Alaska {pg 178 fn 3}

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

absinthe, curaçoa=> absinthe, curaçao {pg 72}

they got the length=> they go to the length {pg 78}

Kadiak Island, Alaska=> Kodiak Island, Alaska {pg 178 fn 3}

FOOTNOTES:[1]Usually the tannin was extracted by placing the acorn flour in some sort of filter and letting water percolate through it.—Ed.[2]Albino freaks.—Ed.[3]The grizzlies of early California were larger than those of the Rocky Mountains, but estimates of their weight were commonly exaggerated. The largest bear of any species of which there is record was one killed by J. C. Tolman, in October, 1889, at the head of English Bay, on Kodiak Island, Alaska. The skin, when moderately stretched on the ground, was 13 ft. 6 in. long by 11 ft. 6 in. wide; length of head, 20 in.; breadth, 12 in.; length of hind foot, 20 in.; breadth, 12 in.; weight of carcass with entrails and blood removed, 1,656 lbs.; estimated live weight, a little over a ton.—Ed.[4]Arrastres.—Ed.[5]Under two hundred miles in an air line.—Ed.[6]An over-estimate: probably about $500,000,000.—Ed.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]Usually the tannin was extracted by placing the acorn flour in some sort of filter and letting water percolate through it.—Ed.

[2]Albino freaks.—Ed.

[3]The grizzlies of early California were larger than those of the Rocky Mountains, but estimates of their weight were commonly exaggerated. The largest bear of any species of which there is record was one killed by J. C. Tolman, in October, 1889, at the head of English Bay, on Kodiak Island, Alaska. The skin, when moderately stretched on the ground, was 13 ft. 6 in. long by 11 ft. 6 in. wide; length of head, 20 in.; breadth, 12 in.; length of hind foot, 20 in.; breadth, 12 in.; weight of carcass with entrails and blood removed, 1,656 lbs.; estimated live weight, a little over a ton.—Ed.

[4]Arrastres.—Ed.

[5]Under two hundred miles in an air line.—Ed.

[6]An over-estimate: probably about $500,000,000.—Ed.

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