Captains of adventure

What is an adventurer? One who has adventures? Surely not. A person charged by a wild rhinoceros is having an adventure, yet however wild the animal, however wild the person, he...

On the other hand, the soldan was not at all well, having been poisoned by a rival prince, and paid no heed to the carrier pigeons with their despairing messages from the front....

“I, John Maundeville, Knight, all be it I am not worthy, that was born in England, in the town of St. Allans, passed the sea in the year of our Lord 1322 ... and hitherto have b...

Heavily beset from the rear, and by thousands of men in canoes, they found that the weight of their transport had jammed the bridge which could not be removed. They filled the s...

Fernão Mendes Pinto was a distant relative of Ananias. He sailed for India in 1537 “meanly accommodated.” At Diu he joined an expedition to watch the Turkish fleet in the Red Se...

“Startled by the noise of the assault Yar Mahomed (the vizier) had risen up, left his quarters, and ridden down to the works. Pottinger went forth at the same time and on the sa...

In 1835 Carson was hunter for Bent’s Fort, keeping the garrison of forty men supplied with buffalo meat. Once he was out hunting with six others and they made their camp tired o...

William Walker, son of a Scotch banker, was born in Tennessee, cantankerous from the time he was whelped. He never swore or drank, or loved anybody, but was rigidly respectable...

Toward the end of these tours I used to frequent the show camp much like a stray dog expecting to be kicked, would spend hours swapping lies with the cowboys in the old Deadwood...

Perhaps that is why he ran away to sea; but anyway a sailing ship landed him in New Orleans, where a rich merchant adopted him as a son. Of course a workhouse boy has nothing to...

Quite apart from the so-called Yokohama pirates, a large fleet of law-abiding Canadian schooners hunted the fur seal at sea, a matter which led to some slight unpleasantness bet...

The Indians were compelled to strip the plains of every living creature, the Blackfeet, despite their religion, to eat fish and birds. Then came the winter; Schultz and his wife...

Northward of the railway was Mount Kenia, a lofty snow-clad volcano; and round his foothills covering a tract the size of Yorkshire or of Massachusetts lived the Kikuyu, a negro...

Let others appraise the merits of this great American gentleman as governor of New York, secretary of the United States Navy, colonel of the Rough Riders, historian of his pet h...

These men were landed on the coast of Mexico, unarmed, to be stripped naked presently by red Indians, and by the Spaniards marched as slaves to the city of Mexico, where after l...

When James the Cur sat on the throne of great Elizabeth, his courtiers had Raleigh tried and condemned to death. The charge was treason in taking Spanish bribes, not a likely ac...

But, when the glaciers of the great ice age blocked the Ottawa Valley, the three seas had to find another outlet, so they made a channel through the Chicago River, down the Des...

On the coast of Madagascar, lying in a bay, two sloops were found, whose seamen supposed the _Duke_ to be a ship of war and being rogues, having stolen these vessels to go pirat...

There were adventures on the way, for Davy hunted buffalo, fought a cougar--knife to teeth--and pacified an Indian tribe to get passage. Then they were joined by a pirate from L...

Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia River, an old stockade of the Nor’westers, was at this time the Hudson’s Bay Company’s capital on the Pacific coast, where reigned the great Doct...

Mary Ann, youngest of Lord Talbot’s sixteen natural children, was the victim of a wicked guardian who took her to the wars as his foot-boy. As a drummer boy she served through t...

Then the marching regiments were placed in the wake of the cavalry, that they might get the dying horses for food, but when the cold came there was no fuel to cook the frozen me...

They were loyal as beaten dogs until Napoleon stole the Spanish crown for brother Joseph, and French armies promenaded all over Spain closely pursued by the British. There was n...

“He made no answer but a scowl of defiance. ‘I am thinking, friend, that this is my house,’ said I, and springing upon him I placed my foot to his shoulder, and gave him a shove...