POPULAR ADVENTURE TALES
THE YOUNG VOYAGEURS ON THE RED RIVER.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. ThomasMayne Reid. Mayne Reid was educated with a view to theChurch, but finding his inclinations opposed to this calling, heemigrated 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 connectionwith hunting and Indian warfare, he settled down in 1843 as ajournalist in Philadelphia, where he made the acquaintance ofEdgar 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 commissionas second lieutenant in the 1st New York Volunteers, he sailedfor Vera Cruz to take part in the Mexican war. He behavedwith conspicuous gallantry in many engagements, and wasseverely wounded and disabled at the storming of Chapultepecon the 13th September, 1847.
Returning to the United States in the spring of 1848, heresumed literary work. But in June, 1849, he sailed forEurope in order to take part in the revolutionary movementsgoing on in Hungary and Bavaria, arriving however too late, heturned 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 numberof volumes, which indeed no one else was capable of writing,for in them are avowedly embodied the observations andexperiences of his own extraordinary career.
Unfortunate building and journalistic speculation and enterprisesinvolved him in financial failure, so he returned to NewYork in October, 1867. There he founded and conducted TheOnward Magazine, but owing to recurring bad effects of his oldMexican wound, he had to abandon work for sometime and gointo the hospital, on leaving which he returned to England in1870. During the later years of his life he resided at Ross inHerefordshire where he died on the 22nd October, 1883, and wasburied in Kensal Green Cem