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Bancroft Library 



THE LATE 



GEORGE FBEDERICK BUXTON 



^ 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 regiment, the author of the following 

 sketches. 



Many men, even in the most enterprising periods of 

 our history, have been made the subjects of elaborate 

 biography, with far less title to the honour than this 

 lamented young officer. Time was not granted him to 

 embody in a permanent shape a tithe of his personal 

 experiences and strange adventures in three quarters of 

 the globe. Considering, indeed, the amount of physical 

 labour he underwent, and the extent of the fields over 

 which his wanderings spread, it is almost surprising he 

 found leisure to write so much. At the early age of 

 seventeen, Mr Ruxton quitted Sandhurst, to learn the 

 practical part of a soldier's profession in the civil wars 



