[The Adventures of "Wide World" Artists.]
By J. Sydney Boot.
It has always been our rule, in order to obtain accurate pictures, to entrust the illustration of our stories only to artists who have actually visited or lived in the various countries referred to, and are consequently familiar with the conditions of life prevailing there. The result of this custom is that our artistic staff is composed of men who have travelled extensively, roughing it in many remote parts of the world. In the course of their journeyings our illustrators have themselves met with exciting and unusual experiences, some of the most interesting of which are here given, each artist depicting his own adventure.
I.
That the artists who illustrate the stories in The Wide World Magazine are recruited from a specially-qualified staff is, we venture to think, an obvious fact. Our stories, dealing as they do with stirring adventures and strange happenings, ranging in their locale from our own shores to the uttermost ends of the earth, could not, of necessity, receive adequate and accurate pictorial embellishment save at the hands of experts—men, in fact, who have themselves had experience of the world in its most varied aspects.
Our illustrators must, indeed, have in them something of the soldier, the sailor, the hunter, the cowboy, or the explorer to find a place in our pages. Thus, should we have a story dealing with Patagonia, the pictures are drawn by an artist who has actually visited that remote country; when it is necessary to illustrate a scene in the Arctic we employ an artist to whom the everlasting ice is as familiar as the streets of London. Should we find it necessary to depict a marine incident we have recourse to the brush of an artist who has himself been a sailor. In connection with every story we consult our list of "specials" for one who has either met with a like experience or is thoroughly familiar with the country concerned. Thus it will be seen that The Wide World is able to avail itself of the pictorial services of an altogether exceptional body of men, many of whom have themselves met with thrilling adventures. As their experiences will have a particular interest for our readers, we are glad to be able to give an account of the most exciting episodes in the lives of some of the artists whose work has been a prominent feature in this magazine.
Mr. Henry Sandham is a Wide World artist who has had a distinguished and adventurous career. By birth a Canadian, of British descent, he has seen much of the world in out-of-the-way places. He has hunted on the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and has probably travelled North America as extensively as any man living, his sketching trips having taken him from the north of Canada to the south of the United States, and across country from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He served his time in the Canadian Volunteer Artillery and saw active service during the Fenian raid on Canada in 1864. Much to the consternation of his friends, he once set off on a tour with a notorious desperado known as "Curley Bill," a "bad man," whose boast it was that he could not sleep unless he shot a man per month; if troubled with insomnia, he said, he shot an extra one. Mr. Sandham roughed it for some time with this fire-eating companion, who tended him with a solicitude only equalled by that of a mother for her only child; all he could beg, borrow, or steal he cheerfully placed at the artist's disposal. They were attended by a dwarf, cousin to "Curley Bill," who, although of diminutive stature, was quite as desperate a ruffian as his bigger relative, whom he venerated with an ardour amounting to hero-worship, and whose dress, manners, and habits he followed as closely as he could. "Curley No. 2," as he was called, nearly got the party into serious trouble by wanting to shoot a too-inquisitive miner, and was only prevented from so doing by "Curley Bill" himself, who took him by the nape of his neck and shook him as a dog does a rat.