14 INTRODUCTION 



some score Mexicans, at least, being in the room. 



" With regard to the incidents of Indian at- 

 tacks, starvation, cannibalism, &c., I have in- 

 vented not one out of my own head. They are all 

 matters of history in the mountains ; but I have 

 no doubt jumbled the dramatis persona one with 

 another, and may have committed anachronisms." 



Scholars may detect some inaccuracies here and 

 there, such as scarcely could be avoided by one 

 who wrote, as we may say, in the saddle ; but these 

 detract nothing from the essential verity of the 

 book. Ruxton's purpose was not to write a chron- 

 icle, but to exhibit vividly the mountain men and 

 the natives in relation to their environment. If 

 he wrought disconnected incidents into a continu- 

 ous story, and staged men together who may have 

 been a thousand miles apart at the time, it was 

 only because, to this extent, " fiction is the most 

 convincing way of telling the truth." 



As the author of this book was himself a true 

 knight of the wilderness whose brief life was filled 

 with thrilling adventures, we append the follow- 

 ing memoir by one of his friends : 



" The London newspapers of October, 1848, 

 contained the mournful tidings of the death, at 

 St. Louis on the Mississippi, and at the early age 

 of twenty-eight, of Lieutenant George Frederick 

 Ruxton, formerly of her Majesty's 89th Regi- 

 ment, the author of the following sketches: 



" Many men, even in the most enterprising 



