E-text prepared by Al Haines Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 20910-h.htm or 20910-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/9/1/20910/20910-h/20910-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/9/1/20910/20910-h.zip) Transcriber's note: Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book. For its Index, a page number has been placed only at the start of that section. American Fights and Fighters Series SOUTH AMERICAN FIGHTS AND FIGHTERS And Other Tales of Adventure by CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY, LL. D. Illustrations by Seymour M. Stone, George Gibbs, W. J. Aylward and J. N. Marchand Together with Reproductions from Old Prints and Portraits [Frontispiece: "The Poor Little Governor . . . Distanced His Fierce Pursuers at Last"] Garden City -------- New York Doubleday, Page & Company MCMXIII All Rights Reserved, Including That of Translation into Foreign Languages, Including the Scandinavian Copyright, 1910, by Doubleday, Page & Company Published, April, 1910 To George William Beatty Good Fellow, Good Citizen Good Friend PREFACE The first part of this new volume of the _American Fights and Fighters Series_ needs no special introduction. Partly to make this the same size as the other books, but more particularly because I especially desired to give a permanent place to some of the most dramatic and interesting episodes in our history--especially as most of them related to the Pacific and the Far West--the series of papers in part second was included. "The Yarn of the _Essex_, Whaler" is abridged from a quaint account written by the Mate and published in an old volume which is long since out of print and very scarce. The papers on the _Tonquin_, John Paul Jones, and "The Great American Duellists" speak for themselves. The account of the battle of the Pitt River has never been published in book form heretofore. The last paper "On Being a Boy Out West" I inserted because I enjoy it myself, and because I have found that others young and old who have read it generally like it also. Thanks are due and are hereby extended to the following magazines for permission to republish various articles which originally appeared in their pages: _Harper's_, _Munseys_, _The Cosmopolitan_, _Sunset_ and _The New Era_. I project another volume of the Series supplementing the two Indian volumes immediately preceding this one, but the information is hard to get, and the work amid many other demands upon my time, proceeds slowly. CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY. ST. GEORGE'S RECTORY, Kansas City, Mo., February, 1910. CONTENTS PART I SOUTH AMERICAN FIGHTS AND FIGHTERS PAGE PANAMA AND THE KNIGHTS-ERRANT OF COLONIZATION