Leather-Clad Tales of Adventure and Romance, No. 38

About this issue

This issue of Leather-Clad Tales (No. 38, August 23, 1890) features the opening installment of In the Sunk Lands: or, The Adventures of the X.T.C. Quartette by Walter F. Bruns. The story, aimed at juvenile readers, concerns four young men—Robert Cross and his friends Joe and Treve—who seek an adventurous hunting expedition. Cross learns of the sunk lands of southeastern Missouri and northeastern Arkansas from Jimmerson, a fur dealer's agent, who explains they were created by earthquakes of 1811-1813 that submerged plantations and swampland. The region teems with game: bear, deer, rabbits, catamounts, and birds. Jimmerson offers the boys use of his shanty on Muddy Run near Maumelle Lake and advises them to reach Jonesboro by rail, then hire horses and wagon. The narrative establishes a frontier adventure setting with frontier dialect and period conventions of boys' adventure fiction.