THE TWELVE ADVENTURERS ‘THE Twelve Adventurers’ is the first of two stories in the earliest of Charlotte Brontë’s manuscripts, and was written by her when she was only twelve years of age. Her early admiration for the hero of the story, the ‘Great Duke,’ was first noted by Mrs. Gaskell in _The Life of Charlotte Brontë_, 1857, vol. i. p. 94, where she says: All that related to him (the Duke of Wellington) belonged to the heroic age. Did Charlotte want a knight-errant, or a devoted lover, the Marquis of Douro, or Lord Charles Wellesley, came ready to her hand. There is hardly one of her prose writings at this time in which…their ‘august father’ does not appear as a sort of Jupiter Tonans, or Deus ex Machinâ. The country ‘discovered’ by the twelve adventurers became the scene of nearly all the stories written by Charlotte Brontë during the following eleven years. Originally named ‘The Country of the Genii,’ the fairies deserted it after Charlotte’s school-days at Roe Head (1831-1832), and the country was re-named ‘The Kingdom of Angria.’ The ‘great city’ became ‘The Glass Town’ or ‘Verreopolis,’ which was afterwards changed to ‘Verdopolis,’ the chief city of Angria. C. W. H. CHAPTER I THE COUNTRY OF THE GENII THERE is a tradition that some thousands of years ago twelve men from Britain, of a most gigantic size, and twelve men from Gaul, came over to the country of the genii, and while here were continually at war with each other; and, after remaining many years, returned again to Britain and Gaul. In the inhabited parts of the genii countries there are now no vestiges of them, though it is said there have been found some colossal skeletons in that wild, barren sand, the evil desert. I have read a book called _The Travels of Captain Parnell_, out of which the following is an extract: