Bayard Taylor (1825-1878) was already a well-established writer when he traveled to California as special correspondent for the New York Tribune in the summer of 1849. On his return to New York, Taylor established himself not only as one of America's great travel writers but as a true man of letters, producing distinguished novels and poems as well as nonfiction for the next quarter century. Eldorado (1850) consists of Taylor's rewritten dispatches...
Long before the American Revolution, fur trappers were traveling thousands of miles into the remote wilderness in their quest for beaver pelts, the frontier's most valuable commodity. These hardened, unsettled men were at the forefront of the Western expansion, hunting amid the Central Rockies by the 1830s and occasionally wandering all the way to the shores of the Pacific. Their lives and accomplishments are vividly and authentically recaptured in...
From 1870 until 1886 Captain John G. Bourke served on the staff of General George Crook, who Sherman described as the greatest Indian fighter the army ever had, a man whose prowess was demonstrated "from British America to Mexico, from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean." But On the Border with Crook is far more than a first-hand account of Crook's campaigns during the Plains Indian wars and in the Southwest. Alert, curious, and perceptive, Bourke...
This book describes Roosevelt's routine labor and extraordinary adventrues, including a stint as a deputy sheriff pursuing three horse thieves through the cold of winter. Whether recounting stories of cowboy fights or describing his hunting of elk, antelope and bear, his book expresses his lifelong delight in physical hardihood and tests of nerve.
Originally published over one hundred years ago, "Roughing It" tells the (almost) true story of Mark Twain's rollicking adventures across the United States. A hilarious account of how the author tried finding wealth in the rocks of Nevada, it was published before his most famous works and shows why he would grow to become one of the most beloved American writers of all time. The story follows many of Twain's early adventures, including a visit to...
The thrilling adventures of traveler, rancher, and fighter "Big-Foot" Wallace in a bygone era of the American frontier.
Amid the embroiling conflicts of frontiersmen, Mexicans, and war in Texas, 1837, William "Big-Foot" Wallace left his hometown of Virginia to avenge the deaths of his brother and cousin, soldiers executed by Mexicans. Upon joining the Texas Rangers, Wallace was swept into the clashes at Salado Creek, Hondo River, and the Battle of...
Every army needs its scouts. A good scout knows the enemy and the enemy's terrain as well as his own, and is resourceful and incisive, cool-headed and courageous. A great scout is irreplaceable. And no greater scout than Frank Grouard has ever served in the US Army. During the Indian Wars in the American West, he was so valuable that General George Crook, considered the greatest of Indian fighters, said he would rather have lost a third of his command...
