CHAPTER I. ST. CLAIR'S DEFEAT, 1791. The Westward March of the Backwoodsman. The backwoods folk, the stark hunters and tree-fellers, and the war-worn regulars who fought beside them in the forest, pushed ever westward the frontier of the Republic. Year after year each group of rough settlers and rough soldiers wrought its part in the great epic of wilderness conquest. The people that for one or... more...

THE MOON STRICKEN It so fell that one dark evening in the month of June I was belated in the Bernese Oberland. Dusk overtook me toiling along the great Chamounix Road, and in the heart of a most desolate gorge, whose towering snow-flung walls seemed—as the day sucked inwards to a point secret as a leech's mouth—to close about me like a monstrous amphitheatre of ghosts. The rutted road, dipping... more...

INTRODUCTION. Some years ago I was at work in Salzburg: in the library among the old records, and in the Museum of Roman antiquities. My studies were principally concerned with the fifth century: the time when the Germanic tribes invaded these regions, the Roman garrisons retiring with or without resistance, while many settlers remained in the land. Peasants, trades-people, mechanics, would not forsake... more...

The hooded skunk, Mephitis macroura Lichtenstein, can be distinguished from the only other species in the genus, Mephitis mephitis Schreber, by the larger tympanic bullae, in the white-backed color phase by having some black hairs mixed with the white hairs of the back, and in the black-backed phase by having the two white stripes widely separated and on the sides of the animal instead of narrowly... more...

CHAPTER I—THE DAWN An ancient English Cathedral Tower?  How can the ancient English Cathedral tower be here!  The well-known massive gray square tower of its old Cathedral?  How can that be here!  There is no spike of rusty iron in the air, between the eye and it, from any point of the real prospect.  What is the spike that intervenes, and who has set it up?  Maybe it is set up by the... more...

For a long time affairs at Crotona ran along in this manner and Eumolpus, flushed with success so far forgot the former state of his fortunes that he even bragged to his followers that no one could hold out against any wish of his, and that any member of his suite who committed a crime in that city would, through the influence of his friends, get off unpunished. But, although I daily crammed my bloated... more...

Not far from Westminster Abbey, as most of our readers know well, stands the gorgeous pile which Mr. Barry has designed, and for which, in a pecuniary sense, a patient public has been rather handsomely bled.  Few are there who have looked at that pile from the Bridge—or from the numerous steamers which throng the river—or loitered round it on a summer’s eve, without feeling some little reverence... more...

PREFACE. Here we are with our Nineteenth Volume complete. We do not carry it to Court to gain patronage, neither do we preface it with a costly dedication to a purse-proud patron; but we present it at the levee of the people, as a production in which the information and amusement of one and all are equally kept in view. We know that instances have occurred of authors tiring out their patrons. A... more...

PREFATORY NOTE. The title-page sufficiently sets forth the end this little book is intended to serve. For convenience' sake I have arranged in alphabetical order the subjects treated of, and for economy's sake I have kept in mind that "he that uses many words for the explaining of any subject doth, like the cuttle-fish, hide himself in his own ink." The curious inquirer who sets... more...

CHAPTER I WAIFS OF THE PLAIN The first herd of trail cattle to leave Dodge City, Kansas, for the Northwest, during the summer of 1885, was owned by the veteran drover, Don Lovell. Accidents will happen, and when about midway between the former point and Ogalalla, Nebraska, a rather serious mishap befell Quince Forrest, one of the men with the herd. He and the horse wrangler, who were bunkies, were... more...