Certain of these men have been accused of being adventurers, as they unquestionably were—but what, pray, were Hawkins and Raleigh and Drake? Others have been condemned as being filibusters, an accusation which in some cases was doubtless deserved—but were Jason and his Argonauts anything but filibusters who raided Colchis to loot it of the golden fleece? Adventurers and filibusters though some of them may have been, they were brave men (there can be no disputing that) and makers of history. But it was their fortune—or misfortune—to have been romantic and picturesque and to have gone ahead without the formality of obtaining the government’s commission or permission, which, in the eyes of the sedate and prosaic historians, has completely damned them. But, as we have not hesitated to benefit from the lands they won for us, it is but doing them the barest justice to listen to their stories. And I think you will agree with me that in their stories there is remarkably little of which we need to feel ashamed and much of which we have reason to be proud.

Devious and dangerous were the roads which these men followed—amid the swamps of Florida, across the sun-baked Texan prairies, down the burning deserts of Chihuahua, over the snow-bound ridges of the Rockies, into the miasmic jungles of Tabasco, along the pirate-haunted coasts of Malaysia, across the Indian country, through the mined and shot-swept straits of Shimonoseki; but, no matter what perils bordered them, or into what far corner of the earth they led, at the end Glory beckoned and called.

E. Alexander Powell.

Santa Barbara,
California.

CONTENTS

PAGE
Foreword[ vii]
I. Adventurers All[ 1]
II. When We Smashed the Prophet’s Power[ 55]
III. The War That Wasn’t a War[ 87]
IV. The Fight at Qualla Battoo[ 131]
V. Under the Flag of the Lone Star[ 161]
VI. The Preacher Who Rode for an Empire[ 195]
VII. The March of the One Thousand[ 235]
VIII. When We Fought the Japanese[ 277]

ILLUSTRATIONS

On the decks above were three hundred desperate andwell-armed natives[ Frontispiece]
FACING PAGE
The Indians, panic-stricken at the sight of the oncomingtroopers, broke and ran[ 84]
Bowie, propped on his pillows, shot two soldiers andplunged his terrible knife into the throat of another[ 178]
In another moment the gun was pouring death into theranks of its late owners[ 260]

ADVENTURERS ALL

ADVENTURERS ALL