-houses, the light-ship service, the
life-boat service, South Africa, Norway, the North Sea fishing fleet,
ballooning, deep-sea diving, Algiers, and many more, experiencing the
lives of the men and women in these settings by living with them for
weeks and months at a time, and he lived as they lived.

He was a very true-to-life author, depicting the often squalid scenes he
encountered with great care and attention to detail. His young readers
looked forward eagerly to his next books, and through the 1860s and
1870s there was a flow of books from his pen, sometimes four in a year,
all very good reading. The rate of production diminished in the last
ten or fifteen years of his life, but the quality never failed.

He published over ninety books under his own name, and a few books for
very young children under the pseudonym "Comus".

For today's taste his books are perhaps a little too religious, and what
we would nowadays call "pi". In part that was the way people wrote in
those days, but more important was the fact that in his days at the Red
River Settlement, in the wilds of Canada, he had been a little
dissolute, and he did not want his young readers to be unmindful of how
they ought to behave, as he felt he had been.

Some of his books were quite short, little over 100 pages. These books
formed a series intended for the children of poorer parents, having less
pocket-money. These books are particularly well-written and researched,
because he wanted that readership to get the very best possible for
their money. They were published as six series, three books in each
series. Typical of these series is "On the Coast".

________________________________________________________________________

THE ROVER OF THE ANDES, A TALE OF ADVENTURE IN SOUTH AMERICA, BY R.M.
BALLANTYNE.

CHAPTER ONE.

A TALE OF ADVENTURE IN SOUTH AMERICA.

AT THE FOOT OF THE MOUNTAIN RANGE.

Towards the close of a bright and warm day, between fifty and sixty
years ago, a solitary man might have been seen, mounted on a mule,
wending his way slowly up the western slopes of the Andes.

Although decidedly inelegant and unhandsome, this specimen of the human
family was by no means uninteresting. He was so large, and his legs
were so long, that the contrast between him and the little mule which he
bestrode was ridiculous. He was what is sometimes styled "loosely put
together;" nevertheless, the various parts of him were so massive and