Adventure Magazine Cover — page 189: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Camp-Fire in the West Indies and then in South America, I worked my passage home from Rosario to England in a tramp steamer. Without quite knowing how it came about, I drifted into journalism and, after working on country papers for a time, went to London. After some experience there as a ‘‘space merchant,” I joined the staff of one of the big dailies and later became special correspondent. Thinking how nice it would be to sit at a desk and mutilate other fellows’ stuff, I became sub-editor on a London evening paper. I held that job down for two years, by which time I was more sick of office work, blue-pencils and tickers than of anything I had ever experienced before. [tz DOESN’T pay to do the thing you don’t like ’ longer than you can help. It means you can’t give your best. So I let some one else have that job and I took to writing fiction. I found it suited me, - also that I was meeting with more success than I had. dared to anticipate—till the war broke out. I enlisted in the Royal Artillery, got a commission eighteen months later, stopped a “‘Blighty” during the last German advance and spent the next nine months in hospital. Finally I was discharged from the army as medically unfit for further military service. And now, amidst the rugged beauty of Corn- wall, I am once more wielding the pen.—ROoOLF BENNETT. rE ONLY there were space enough it would be good to have every one of us stand up and give an account of himself: Detroit, Mich. I have read Adventure since January, 1912, and have only missed a few issues while in France. I have not taken any part in the subjects that are discussed at ‘‘Camp-Fire,’’ but I can assure you that this section is of great interest to me. I am an Englishman. Have traveled in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany (this was before the War). Also I have seen some parts of Canada. When I first landed in this country I had no intention of staying, but after traveling around some I decided to settle and become an American. That was ten years ago. But some of these days I hope to have the pleasure of seeing Japan, China and India. The only adventure that I can lay claim to is: | Black-jacked in London, 1908. Stabbed in the leg while in Antwerp, Belgium, 1910. Put two years in France with the First Canadian Machine Gun Batt. During that time I was wounded twice. —S. C. BATTEN. O MANY letters have come in in con- nection with Hugh Pendexter’s stories of the early days of this country, often asking for the names of books giving information, that I asked him whether it would be too much trouble to give all of us a list of such books. As a good many of you have found, it’s never too much trouble for Hugh Pen- dexter to be accommodating, so the list follows. 179 First, his letter that accompanied it. The books mentioned have either already been published, are now in our safe or in process of writing. The letter was not intended for Camp-Fire, but I know Mr. Pendexter will not mind its going on to you. Norway, Maine. Dear Hoffman: I am enclosing a short list of books. I have a copy and can add to them. I had thought of dividing, roughly, the West into eras. Of course books cited here on the fur trade and the Santa Fé Trail will overlap into Injun dope, etc. All these books are easily accessible, with possible exceptions of Ross’ and Leonard’s narratives, College and public libraries will have most of them. Now I have lists of works on the Indian, Western development, etc., which will probably run over 3,000. I had thought to weed out the more accessible and trustworthy and begin back with first colonial days, when the Appalachians marked the beginning of the “‘West.”” Once they (the lists) are printed, you'll receive quite a few letters suggesting others. 3 N writing my yarns I have been anxious to pick out a time which was a historical hinge on which our future development swung. ‘“The Myth Killers’ shows how France lost her chance to clinch her hold on the Mississippi Basin through the gullibility of the nation and its common belief in fairy-tales. Time 1720. Law's company, Bien- ville’s effort to make France see the light, En- gland’s réle as Myth Killer.in building more pro- saically, detailed glimpses of the seldom mentioned Natchez, also their neighbors, the Chickasaws and Choctaws. This yarn, together with ‘‘Red Belts,” “The Floating Frontier,” ‘“The Torch Bearers” and “The Bush Fighters” furnish five very im- portant historical hinges. I have been doping out Lord Dunmore’s War, : 1774, as the background for another hinge, for, although very brief, it held the northwest Indians quiet for the first two years of the Revolution. Had they not been thoroughly whipped at Point Pleasant we would have emerged from the Revo- lution with the Alleghenies as our western boun- tion. Pontiac’s War and Tecumseh’s. War were the last barriers to our expansion and paved the way for the beginning of that new era which began in 1807, i. e., the public’s recognition of steam in the development of travel, to be followed by the period of railroad building commencing in 1828. (If I were teaching history I’d teach hinges, so the scholar would have a comprehensive realization of how different periods were linked together and what causes constituted the links.) As strong condi- tional causes, prior to:Pontiac’s war, are the first three intercolonial wars— King William’s, 1690, including Frontenac’s campaign vs. the Iroquois, causing them to cease negotiations with western tribes-and sue for peace, important; massacre at Schenectady. Queene Anne’s War, 1702-1710, ending with uneasy peace of Utrecht, and resulting in France keeping the Mississippi valley; King George’s War, 1744-48.. (The fourth and last intercolonial war, French and Indian, 1754, I’ve covered in “The Bush Fighters.”) I am keen to play up each one of these periods before I quit the DOO (C@