Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England The Desert Home, by Captain Mayne Reid. ________________________________________________________________________ This was one of the first books that Mayne Reid wrote. Its action takes place in a central part of North America, designated a Desert. Some people set out to travel in this central desert, when they somewhat lose their way. Luckily they eventually spot the light of a farm-house, where they knock and receive hospitality. Their kind host and his family then explain to them how they came to live where they do, and what a lovely place it is. Reid is very knowledgeable about animals and also plants. Much of the rest of the book is taken up with tales of encounters with various animals, and with stories of the uses of many trees and shrubs. It is written in an unusual style, but in fact, because of the shortness of the chapters, it can hold the reader's attention very well. As with several other books by this author it had been very badly typeset, apparently using old and damaged type. This made the OCRed version of the text come out very full of misreads, but it was fun tidying this up. Apologies if any more misreads come to light. ________________________________________________________________________ THE DESERT HOME, BY CAPTAIN MAYNE REID. CHAPTER ONE. THE GREAT AMERICAN DESERT. There is a great desert in the interior of North America. It is almost as large as the famous Saara of Africa. It is fifteen hundred miles long, and a thousand wide. Now, if it were of a regular shape--that is to say, a parallelogram--you could at once compute its area, by multiplying the length upon the breadth; and you would obtain one million and a half for the result--one million and a half of square miles. But its outlines are as yet very imperfectly known; and although it is fully fifteen hundred miles long, and in some places a thousand in breadth, its surface-extent is probably not over one million of square miles, or twenty-five times the size of England. Fancy a desert twenty-five times as big as all England! Do you not think that it has received a most appropriate name when it is called the _Great American Desert_?