As we are told in the Preface, this is the last book Reid wrote before his death in 1883. A young farm-boy walks down to Portsmouth, a port not too far away, and eventually gets taken on as a hand on an American barque, trading with the Pacific. Four years later he has risen to be second mate. But when rounding Cape Horn a severe storm overwhelms the vessel, and she is lost after springing a very bad leak. All on board take to the boats, but the pinnace gets separated from the gig, on which our heroes have made their escape. The ship's carpenter, an old and experienced seaman, a former whaler, has an extraordinary amount of knowledge of the natives of Tierra del Fuego--the Land of Fire--for that is where they are. Without that knowledge the party would not have survived. Unfortunately this great seaman (somewhat after the style of Masterman Ready) does not speak in educated English, but you will just have to get used to that.

There are various encounters with the tribes of the region, all very well told. Eventually, shortly after their most serious brush with the locals, they reach a large vessel at anchor, and the pinnace alongside her, so that they are saved.

Reid, being a good naturalist, tells us a good deal about the local flora and fauna. We also learn how to make fire in a land where it rains five days in six. His account of the local tribes, their skills and their shortcomings, will give you much food for thought. And the book makes a very nice audiobook.

REID, Thomas Mayne (1818-83).

Irish writer of boys' stories, born in Ballyroney, County Down. In 1840 he emigrated to New Orleans, settled as a journalist in Philadelphia (1843), and served in the US army during the Mexican war (1847), where he was severely wounded. Returning to Britain in 1849, he settled down to a literary life in London. His vigorous style and hairbreadth escapes delighted his readers. Among his books, many of which were popular in translation in Poland and Russia, were The Rifle Rangers (1850), Scalp Hunters (1851), Boy Hunters (1853), War Trail (1851), Boy Tar (1859), and Headless Horseman (1866). He went back to New York in 1867 and founded the Onward Magazine, but returned to England in 1870.

(With acknowledgements to Chambers Biographical Dictionary)

The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature mentions that he was the son of a Presbyterian Minister, and that the first two books mentioned above were for a general readership. When he returned to England the publisher Davis Bogue suggested that he should write books specifically for boys, catering for the Christmas market each year. He was a naturalist, and wrote about the creations of Nature, where many other Victorian authors would have been all moralising and pious. He was a great admirer of Byron, and some of his heroes are Byronic in temperament.

A PDF of scans and an HTML version of this book are provided. We also provide a plain TEXT version and full instructions for using this to make your own audiobook. To find these click on the PDF, HTML or TXT links on the left.

These transcriptions of books by various nineteenth century authors of instructive books for teenagers, were made during the period 1997 to the present day by Athelstane e-Books. Most of the books are concerned with the sea, but in any case all will give a good idea of life in the nineteenth century. This of course includes attitudes prevalent at the time, but frowned upon nowadays.

We used a Plustek OpticBook 3600 scanner to scan the pages. We then made a pdf which we used to assist with editing the OCRed text.

To make a text version we used ABBYY Finereader 8 to produce a first draft of the text, and Athelstane software to find misreads and improve the text. We proof-read the chapters, and then made a CD with the book read aloud by either Fonix ISpeak or TextAloud MP3. The last step enables us to hear and correct most of the errors that may have been missed by the other steps, as well as entertaining us during the work of transcription.

The resulting text can be read at www.athelstane.co.uk