CASTAWAYS AND CRUSOES. Since the beginning of navigation men have faced the dangers of shipwreck and starvation. Scattered through the annals of the sea are the stories of those to whom disaster came and the personal records of the way they met it. Some of them are given in this volume, narratives of men who lived by their hands among savages on forlorn coasts, or drifted helpless in open boats. They range from the South Seas to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, from Patagonia to Cuba. They are echoes from the days when the best that could be hoped by the man who went to sea was hardship and man’s-sized work. CAPTIVES AMONG THE INDIANS. First of all is the story of Captain James Smith, who was captured by the Delawares at the time of Braddock’s defeat, was adopted into the tribe, and for four years lived as an Indian, hunting with them, studying their habits, and learning their point of view. Then there is the story of Father Bressani who felt the tortures of the Iroquois, of Mary Rowlandson who was among the human spoils of King Philip’s war, and of Mercy Harbison who suffered in the red flood that followed St. Clair’s defeat. All are personal records made by the actors themselves in those days when the Indian was constantly at our forefather’s doors. FIRST THROUGH THE GRAND CANYON, by Major John Wesley Powell. Major Powell was an officer in the Union Army who lost an arm at Shiloh. In spite of this, four years after the war he organized an expedition which explored the Grand Canyon of the Colorado in boats--the first to make this journey. His story has been lost for years in the oblivion of a scientific report. It is here rescued and presented as a record of one of the great personal exploring feats, fitted to rank with the exploits of Pike, Lewis and Clark, and Mackenzie. ADRIFT IN THE ARCTIC ICE-PACK, by Dr. Elisha Kent Kane. Dr. Kane was connected with one of the numerous relief expeditions which went north in the middle of the last century, sailing from New York early in the spring of 1849. They found themselves caught in the ice of Lancaster Sound early in the fall and spent the entire winter driving to and fro across the Sound frozen fast in the ice-pack. Dr. Kane’s narrative gives the most vivid and accurate account that has ever appeared of ship life during an arctic winter. He contributes many important observations as to ice and weather conditions. His picture of the equipment and provisions makes rather strange reading in the light of our modern development for exploration purposes.