Beyond the Old Frontier - Adventures of Indian-Fighters, Hunters, and Fur-Traders by George Bird Grinnell

Author:George Bird Grinnell [Grinnell, George Bird]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anboco
Published: 2017-02-06T23:00:00+00:00

GEORGE FREDERICK RUXTON, HUNTER

Some time about 1840 George Frederick Ruxton, a young Englishman, was serving in Canada as an officer in a British regiment. In 1837, when only seventeen years of age, he had left Sandhurst to enlist as a volunteer in the service of Spain, where he served with gallantry and distinction in the civil wars and received from Queen Isabella II the cross of the first class of the Order of San Fernando. The monotony of garrison duty in Canada soon palled on one who had taken part in more stirring scenes, and before long he resigned his commission in his regiment and sought new fields of adventure.

He was a man fond of action and eager to see new things. His earliest project was to cross Africa, and this he attempted, but without success.

He next turned toward Mexico as a field for adventure, and he has painted a fascinating picture, both of life there at the time of the Mexican War and of life in the mountains to the north. The two small volumes of his writings are now out of print, but they are well worth reading by those who desire to learn of the early history of a country that is now well known, and which within fifty years has changed from a region without population to one which is a teeming hive of industry.

In Ruxton’s Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains is a singularly vivid account of the author’s journeyings from England, by way of the Madeira Islands, Barbadoes and others of the Antilles, to Cuba, and so to Vera Cruz, more fully called the Rich City of the True Cross; or as often, and quite aptly—from the plague of yellow fever which so constantly ravaged it—the City of the Dead. From Vera Cruz he travelled north, passing through Mexico, whose coast was then blockaded by the gringoes of North America, then through the country ravaged by marauding Indians, and at last, leaving Chihuahua and crossing by way of El Paso into New Mexico, he reached what is now the Southwestern United States. Through this country he passed—in winter—north through the mountains, meeting the trappers and mountaineers of those days and the Indians as well, crossed the plains, and finally reached St. Louis, and from there passed east to New York.

Although untrained in literature, Ruxton was a keen observer, and presented his narrative in most attractive form. He saw the salient characteristics of the places and the people among whom he was thrown, and commented on them most interestingly. He gives us a peculiarly vivid picture of Mexico as it was during its early days of stress and strain, or from the time of its independence, for within the last twenty-five years there had been not far from two hundred and fifty revolutions. This state of things, as is well known, continued for a dozen years after the Mexican War, or until the great Indian Juarez became ruler of the country and put down lawlessness and revolution with a strong hand.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.