Produced by Mary Meehan and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE BOY SLAVES. BY CAPT. MAYNE REID AUTHOR OF "THE DESERT HOME," "THE OCEAN WAIFS," ETC. With Illustrations. A NEW EDITION, WITH A MEMOIR BY R. H. STODDARD. NEW YORK: THOMAS R. KNOX & CO., Successors to James Miller, 813 Broadway. Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1864, by TICKNOR AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1884, by THOMAS R. KNOX & CO., in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. New York, January 1st, 1869. Messrs. Fields, Osgood & Co.:-- I accept the terms offered, and hereby concede to you the exclusive right of publication, in the United States, of all my juvenile Tales of Adventure, known as Boys' Novels. MAYNE REID. TROW'S PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY, NEW YORK. [Illustration: THE DEATH OF GOLAH.] AUTHOR'S NOTE. Captain Mayne Reid is pleased to have had the help of an American Author in preparing for publication this story of "The Boy Slaves," and takes the present opportunity of acknowledging that help, which has kindly extended beyond matters of merely external form, to points of narrative and composition, which are here embodied with the result of his own labor. The Rancho, December, 1864. MEMOIR OF MAYNE REID. No one who has written books for the young during the present century ever had so large a circle of readers as Captain Mayne Reid, or ever was so well fitted by circumstances to write the books by which he is chiefly known. His life, which was an adventurous one, was ripened with the experience of two Continents, and his temperament, which was an ardent one, reflected the traits of two races. Irish by birth, he was American in his sympathies with the people of the New World, whose acquaintance he made at an early period, among whom he lived for years, and whose battles he helped to win. He was probably more familiar with the Southern and Western portion of the United States forty years ago than any native-born American of that time. A curious interest attaches to the life of Captain Reid, but it is not of the kind that casual biographers dwell upon. If he had written it himself it would have charmed thousands of readers, who can now merely imagine what it might have been from the glimpses of it which they obtain in his writings. It was not passed in the fierce light of publicity, but in that simple, silent obscurity which is the lot of most men, and is their happiness, if they only knew it.