Best of
Adventure

1905

The Journals of Lewis and Clark


Meriwether Lewis - 1905
    Keenly aware that the course of the nation's destiny lay westward—and that a "Voyage of Discovery" would be necessary to determine the nature of the frontier—President Thomas Jefferson commissioned Meriwether Lewis to lead an expedition from the Missouri River to the northern Pacific coast and back. From 1804 to 1806, accompanied by co-captain William Clark, the Shoshone guide Sacajawea, and thirty-two men, Lewis mapped rivers, traced the principal waterways to the sea, and established the American claim to the territories of Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Together the captains kept this journal: a richly detailed record of the flora and fauna they sighted, the native tribes they encountered, and the awe-inspiring landscape they traversed, from their base camp near present-day St. Louis to the mouth of the Columbia River, that has become an incomparable contribution to the literature of exploration and the writing of natural history.

My Sixty Years on the Plains: Trapping, Trading, and Indian Fighting


William Thomas Hamilton - 1905
    You will do.” Following the doctor’s orders for a change of climate, in 1842 William Hamilton found himself accompanying a party of trappers on a year-long expedition. Heading into the wild, Hamilton would prove himself to be a fast learner, as adept with a firearm as with sign language: this early experience would be the making of him.As the nineteenth century progressed, along with many other trappers Hamilton found himself drawn into the Indian Wars brought about by territorial expansion.Exploring, trapping, trading and fighting, Hamilton shows how every aspect of a mountain man’s life relied on his wits and knowledge in order survive the inhospitable environments.First published in 1905, when the experiences of such pushing, adventurous and fearless men were becoming a thing of the past, Hamilton’s unassuming memoir relates an extraordinary life in a disappearing American West.

The Scarlet Pimpernel


Emmuska Orczy - 1905
    His friends and foes know him only as the Scarlet Pimpernel. But the ruthless French agent Chauvelin is sworn to discover his identity and to hunt him down.

Love of Life (Short Story Collection)


Jack London - 1905
    Written during his 'Klondike' period, the title story 'Love of Life' follows the trek of a prospector across the Canadian tundra.Contents:- Love of Life- The Story of Keesh- A Day's Lodging- Negore, The Coward- The Sun Dog Trail- The Unexpected- The White Man's Way- Brown Wolf

The First Book of Ayesha-She & Ayesha: The Return of She


H. Rider Haggard - 1905
    His first novel of She is possibly one of the best known and has become one of the most popular novels ever. Yet She is just the first of four exciting adventures of mysticism, intrigue, love, war and power that feature the beautiful and immortal Ayesha. The first two novels collected in this special Leonaur volume, the first of a two book set of all four novels, are She and Ayesha, the Return of She. Both feature Cambridge professor Horace Holly and his ward Leo Vincey. The third novel, in the second volume, unites two of Haggard's most beloved characters-Allan Quatermain-the little, indestructible consummate 'white man in Africa'-trader, explorer and big game hunter and of course Ayesha herself in what is essentially a prequel to She. The final novel in volume two is Wisdom's Daughter. Of course all four novels are, true to the Haggard tradition, roller-coaster rides of action and thrills a-plenty to please his many aficionados. Available in soft cover and hard cover with dust jacket for collectors.

Red Fox


Charles G.D. Roberts - 1905
    D. Roberts, we follow the adventures of the titular Red Fox as he grows up and takes on the Canadian wilderness. Curious and intelligent, Red Fox learns valuable life lessons and survival skills from his encounters with the animals around him, including the humans on local farms - skills which ultimately end up saving his life in situations where other foxes have perished.Roberts sets out to make Red Fox and the animal world around him more understandable and relatable to readers through the use of vivid, expressive detail and a thoroughly engaging story, and in doing so encourages awareness of the misunderstanding and cruelty which is sometimes involved in humanities relationship with wild animals.Excerpt:Chapter I."The price of his life"Two voices, a mellow, bell-like baying and an excited yelping, came in chorus upon the air of the April dawn. The musical and irregularly blended cadence, now swelling, now diminishing, seemed a fit accompaniment to the tender, thin-washed colouring of the landscape which lay spread out under the gray and lilac lights of approaching sunrise. The level country, of mixed woodland and backwoods farm, still showed a few white patches here and there where the snow lingered in the deep hollows; but all over the long, wide southward-facing slope of the uplands, with their rough woods broken by occasional half-cleared, hillocky pastures, the spring was more advanced. Faint green films were beginning to show on the birch and poplar thickets, and over the pasture hillocks; and every maple hung forth a rosy veil that seemed to imitate the flush of morning.[...]

The Voyage Of The Discovery


Robert Falcon Scott - 1905
    I had only to read a few pages to realise that it was literature, unique of its kind . . . Scott's mind was like wax to receive an impression and like marble to retain it'. So wrote Leonard Huxley, and he was not alone in his opinion. When this account of Scott's first Antarctic expedition appeared in 1905 the reviewers recognised it as a masterpiece and the first printing sold out immediately. Scott is best known for his doomed last expedition in 1912, but it was this earlier voyage that truly began the opening up of the Antarctic continent and laid the groundwork for the 'Heroic Age' of Antarctic exploration. The record of that voyage is a classic account by a remarkable explorer who was also one of the most talented writers in the field of polar exploration. Scott brings alive for the reader the brilliance of the aurora in the long winter nights, the hunger and danger of sledging trips, the isolation, and the joy of seeing what no human eye had previously seen.