Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 9

About this issue

This issue of Beadle's Half-Dime Library presents serialized excerpts from The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. The opening chapter recounts the Baron's youthful voyage to Ceylon, where a storm uproots enormous trees; one tree, carrying a couple gathering cucumbers, falls horizontally and kills an oppressive island chief, leading the natives to appoint the couple as their new governors. The Baron later encounters a lion and crocodile near a river; the lion leaps into the crocodile's open mouth, and the Baron severs the lion's head with his hunting knife, then suffocates the crocodile by ramming the head deeper into its throat. The crocodile, measured at forty feet, is eventually stuffed for Amsterdam's museum. Subsequent chapters follow the Baron's winter journey through Russia on horseback and sledge. After sleeping in a snow-buried churchyard, he discovers his horse tied to a church steeple weathercock. Later, while traveling by sledge, a starving wolf consumes the horse from inside; the Baron whips the wolf, which leaps into the harness, and they both arrive safely in St. Petersburg. The final chapter describes hunting exploits: the Baron strikes a door-post, creating sparks from his eyes that ignite his gun's powder, killing fifty ducks; he shoots a spike-nail through a fox's brush to pin it to a tree, then flogs the animal from its skin; and he leads a blind old sow home by holding its severed tail.