The Project Gutenberg EBook of Gaspar the Gaucho, by Mayne Reid

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Title: Gaspar the Gaucho
A Story of the Gran Chaco

Author: Mayne Reid

Illustrator: F.C. Tilney

Release Date: November 28, 2007 [EBook #23648]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GASPAR THE GAUCHO ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Gaspar the Gaucho, by Captain Mayne Reid.

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This is another excellent book by the inventor of the Wild West genre.
Set in South America, in Paraguay, the hero and his band of friends have
many an adventure, just in the course of one voyage, or undertaking.
They frequently get themselves into dangerous and risky situations, but
always by their superior bush-craft manage to get themselves out of them
after having practically died, or at least having seen their horses die.

This is a good book, a vintage one from the Victorian era. The author
learnt his bushcraft during the American-Mexican War, and has given us
several books whose subject and manner arose from what he learnt in that
war.

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GASPAR THE GAUCHO, BY CAPTAIN MAYNE REID.

CHAPTER ONE.

THE GRAN CHACO.

Spread before you a map of South America. Fix your eye on the point of
confluence between two of its great rivers--the Salado, which runs
south-easterly from the Andes mountains, and the Parana coming from the
north; carry your glance up the former to the town of Salta, in the
ancient province of Tucuman; do likewise with the latter to the point
where it espouses the Paraguay; then up this to the Brazilian frontier
fort of Coimbra; finally draw a line from the fort to the aforementioned
town--a line slightly curved with its convexity towards the Cordillera
of the Andes--and you will thus have traced a boundary embracing one of
the least known, yet most interesting, tracts of territory in either
continent of America, or, for that matter, in the world. Within the
limits detailed lies a region romantic in its past as mysterious in its
present; at this hour almost as muc