BY E. ALEXANDER POWELL, F.R.G.S. AUTHOR OF "THE LAST FRONTIER," ETC. ILLUSTRATED CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK 1913   Copyright, 1913, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Published September, 1913 To THE FINEST GENTLEMAN I KNOW MY FATHER — The Lost Legion....

This book is written as a tribute to some men who have been overlooked by History and forgotten by Fame. Though they won for us more than half the territory comprised within our present-day borders, not only have no monuments been erected to perpetuate their exploits in bronze and marble, but they lie for the most part in forgotten and neglected graves, some of them under alien skies. Boyd, Truxtun, Eaton, Reed, Lafitte, Smith, Ide, Ward, Walker—even their names hold no significance for their co

The pitiless Indian sun had poured down upon the Hyderabad maidan until its sandy surface glowed like a stove at white heat. Drawn up in motionless ranks, which stretched from end to end of the great parade-ground, was a division of cavalry: squadron after squadron of scarlet-coated troopers on sleek and shining horses; row after row of brown and bearded faces peering stolidly from under the white turbans. The rays of the sun danced and sparkled upon ten thousand lance-points; the feeble breeze

This is the story of some forgotten fights and fighters in a forgotten war. The governments of the two nations which did the fighting—France and the United States—refused, indeed, to admit that there was any war at all, and, in a sense, they were right, for there was never any declaration of hostilities, and there was never signed a treaty of peace. But it was a very real war, nevertheless, with some of the fiercest battles ever fought on deep water, and when it was over we had laid the foundati

Did you ever, by any chance, leave the Boston State House by the back door? If so, you found yourself in a quiet and rather shabby thoroughfare, cobble-paved and lined on the farther side by old-fashioned red-brick houses, with white, brass-knockered doors, and iron balconies, and green blinds. That is Derne Street. Though a man standing on Boston Common could break one of its violet-glass windows with a well thrown ball, it is, as it were, a placid backwater of the busy streams of commerce whic

We leaned over the rail of the Hamburg , Colonel Roosevelt and I, and watched the olive hills of Fayal rise from the turquoise sea. Houses white as chalk began to peep from among the orange groves; what looked at first sight to be a yellow snake turned into a winding road; then we rounded a headland, and the U-shaped harbor, edged by a sleepy town and commanded by a crumbling fortress, lay before us. "In there," said the ex-President, pointing eagerly as our anchor rumbled down, "was waged one o

How many well-informed people are aware, I wonder, that the fact that the American flag, and not the British, flies to-day over the Mississippi valley is largely due to the eleventh-hour patriotism of a pirate? Of the many kinds of men of many nationalities who have played parts of greater or less importance in the making of our national history, none is more completely cloaked in mystery, romance, and adventure than Jean Lafitte. The last of that long line of buccaneers who for more than two ce

About the word frontiersman there is a pretty air of romance. The very mention of it conjures up a vision of lean, sinewy, brown-faced men, in fur caps and moccasins and fringed buckskin, slipping through virgin forests or pushing across sun-scorched prairies—advance-guards of civilization. Hardy, resolute, taciturn figures, they have passed silently across the pages of our history and we shall see their like no more. To them we owe a debt that we can never repay—nor, indeed, have we even public

Because the battles which marked its establishment were really only skirmishes, in which but an insignificant number of lives were lost, and because it boasted less than a thousand citizens all told, certain of our historians have been so undiscerning as to assert that the Bear Flag Republic was nothing but a travesty and a farce. Therein they are wrong. Though it is doubtless true that the handful of frontiersmen who raised their home-made flag, with its emblem of a grizzly bear, over the Calif

In one of the public squares of San José, which is the capital of Costa Rica, there is a marble statue of a stern-faced young woman, with her foot planted firmly on a gentleman's neck. The young woman is symbolic of the Republic of Costa Rica, and the gentleman ground beneath her heel is supposed to represent the American filibuster and soldier of fortune, William Walker. Now, before going any farther, justice requires me to explain that Walker's downfall was not due to Costa Rica, as the citize

I have known men who, from need of money or from love of adventure, have contracted to do all sorts of seemingly impossible things. Some conquered apparently unconquerable chasms by means of daring bridges; others built railways across waterless, yellow deserts, where experts had asserted that no railway could go; one contracted to find and raise a treasure galleon sunk three hundred years ago; another agreed to compose an opera in a week; while still another engaged to find a man who for two ye