POPULAR ADVENTURE TALES
Popular Adventure Tales
COMPRISING
THE YOUNG VOYAGEURS
or, The Boy Hunters in the North
THE FOREST EXILES
or, Adventures Amid the Wilds of the Amazon
THE BUSH-BOYS
or, Adventures in the Wilds of Southern Africa
By
CAPTAIN MAYNE REID
Author of
“The Rifle Rangers” “The Wood Rangers”
&c., &c.
ILLUSTRATED
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO.
GLASGOW: THOMAS D. MORISON
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Captain Mayne Reid was born at Ballyroney, County Down, on the 4th April, 1818, and was the son of the Rev. Thomas Mayne Reid. Mayne Reid was educated with a view to the Church, but finding his inclinations opposed to this calling, he emigrated to America and arrived in New Orleans on January, 1840. After a varied career as plantation over-seer, school-master, and actor, with a number of expeditions in connection with hunting and Indian warfare, he settled down in 1843 as a journalist in Philadelphia, where he made the acquaintance of Edgar Allan Poe.
Leaving Philadelphia in 1846, he spent the summer at Newport, Rhode Island, as the correspondent of the New York Herald, and in December of the same year, having obtained a commission as second lieutenant in the 1st New York Volunteers, he sailed for Vera Cruz to take part in the Mexican war. He behaved with conspicuous gallantry in many engagements, and was severely wounded and disabled at the storming of Chapultepec on the 13th September, 1847.
Returning to the United States in the spring of 1848, he resumed literary work. But in June, 1849, he sailed for Europe in order to take part in the revolutionary movements going on in Hungary and Bavaria, arriving however too late, he turned his attention again to literature, and in London in 1850, published his first novel “The Rifle Rangers,” in two volumes. Between this date and his death, he produced a large number of volumes, which indeed no one else was capable of writing, for in them are avowedly embodied the observations and experiences of his own extraordinary career.
Unfortunate building and journalistic speculation and enterprises involved him in financial failure, so he returned to New York in October, 1867. There he founded and conducted The Onward Magazine, but owing to recurring bad effects of his old Mexican wound, he had to abandon work for sometime and go into the hospital, on leaving which he returned to England in 1870. During the later years of his life he resided at Ross in Herefordshire where he died on the 22nd October, 1883, and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.
Mayne Reid wrote in all thirty-five works, chiefly books of adventure and travel. As in the case of all authors, the books vary much in merit, but most of them are of a high order in their own department of literature. Many of them have been extraordinary popular and have become standard works. Reid has not been surpassed by any other writer in combining at one and the same time, the features of thrilling adventure and great instruction in the fields of natural history. Many of the works have been translated into Continental languages and are as highly esteemed among the French and Germans as at home.
CONTENTS
Transcriber's Note: Obvious printer errors, (missing accents, missing letters, etc) including punctuation, have been silently corrected.
All other inconsistencies including archaic spellings have been left as they were in the original.
Added a List of Illustrations.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS:
- THE YOUNG VOYAGEURS ON THE RED RIVER.Frontispiece
- THE TRUMPETER SWAN AND THE BALD EAGLE.28
- BASIL AND THE BISON-BULL.50
- THE WAPITI AND THE WOLVERENE.67
- THE BLAIREAU AND THE MARMOTS84
- THE OSPREY AND WHITE-HEADED EAGLE.99
- BASIL AND THE MOOSE BULL.116
- THE WOLVES AND THE PEMMICAN BAGS.129
- THE LYNX AND THE GOLDEN EAGLE.150
- THE FLIGHT OF THE REFUGEES.167
- GUAPO'S ENCOUNTER WITH THE BULLS.196
- GUAPO AND THE 'NIMBLE PETERS.'230
- THE ESCAPE OF THE ARMADILLO.250
- THE VAMPIRE BAT.266
- ADVENTURE WITH AN ANACONDA.287
- THE SHOWER OF LOCUSTS.332
- THE LION IN A FIX.350
- A DEADLY ENCOUNTER.370
- HENDRIK DECOYING THE OUREBIS.386
- SWARTBOY IN A PREDICAMENT.404
- HANS BESIEGED BY A WILDEBEEST.