3. CAPTIVES AMONG THE INDIANS. First of all is the story of Captain James Smith, who was captured by the Delawares at the time of Braddock’s defeat, was adopted into the tribe, and for four years lived as an Indian, hunting with them, studying their habits, and learning their point of view. Then there is the story of Father Bressani who felt the tortures of the Iroquois, of Mary Rowlandson who was among the human spoils of King Philip’s war, and of Mercy Harbison who suffered in the red flood that followed St. Clair’s defeat. All are personal records made by the actors themselves in those days when the Indian was constantly at our forefathers’s doors.
4. FIRST THROUGH THE GRAND CANYON, by Major John Wesley Powell. Major Powell was an officer in the Union Army who lost an arm at Shiloh. In spite of this four years after the war he organized an expedition which explored the Grand Canyon of the Colorado in boats—the first to make this journey. His story has been lost for years in the oblivion of a scientific report. It is here rescued and presented as a record of one of the great personal exploring feats, fitted to rank with the exploits of Pike, Lewis and Clark, and Mackenzie.
5. ADRIFT IN THE ARCTIC ICE-PACK, By Elisha Kent Kane, M. D. Out of the many expeditions that went north in search of Sir John Franklin over fifty years ago, it fell to the lot of one, financed by a New York merchant, to spend an Arctic winter drifting aimlessly in the grip of the Polar ice in Lancaster Sound. The surgeon of the expedition kept a careful diary and out of that record told the first complete story of a Far Northern winter. That story is here presented, shorn of the purely scientific data and stripped to the personal exploits and adventures of the author and the other members of the crew.
Transcriber’s Notes:
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.
Footnotes have been moved to the end of the text and relabeled consecutively through the document.
Punctuation has been made consistent.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
The following change was made:
[p. 84]: standstone changed to sandstone (homogeneous sandstone. There)