Books with author Charles Maynard

The Appalachians are an ancient mountain chain that stretches more than 1,5 miles along eastern North America. This range of mountains is among the oldest in the world. Worn down by erosion, the Appalachian Mountains are known for their forest-covered slopes and farmlands in fertile valleys. Students will read about Hernando de Soto’s explorations during the 154s, and how Daniel Boone built the Wilderness Road and the Cumberland Gap. Today, it has a rich heritage of music and storytelling that reflects the lives of the European and African American people who settled there.

“Have you ever wondered, when you watched a handsome tiger pacing restlessly the length of his cage, what it meant to get him safely and peacefully and alive from his home in some distant oriental jungle to the zoological gardens? It meant skill and ingenuity, courage of a high order and a sporting instinct for hairbreadth escapes. Charles Mayer possesses these qualities, and in his book, “Trapping Wild Animals in Malay Jungles,’ which appeared serially in ‘Asia’ during the past year, he makes the jungle and the people and animals of the jungle live in glowing pages for young and old….Capturing a python thirty-two feet long, crating and shipping it to Cross of Liverpool; facing an elephant in ‘must,’ who had wrecked his stall frightened his keepers, and forcing the mad beast into a new stall – a scene as tense as a bullfight; trapping two full grown orang-outangs; and fighting a seladang, one of the fiercest animals in the jungle, are a few of the exploits described by Mr. Mayer with a straightforward simplicity and sincerity that win the hearts of the readers. For these true tales of Mr. Mayer’s unusual experiences in the jungles of Sumatra, Borneo, Siam, India and the Malay States need no embellishment. They open up, to people starved by city pavements and office desks, a new world of dense undergrowth and wise creeping things and cosmic stirrings. It is impossible in a short review to give an adequate description of the author’s early circus days….A delightful book of adventure.” -Asia, Journal of the American Asiatic Association CONTENTS: Circus Days Jungle Stratagems Elephants Shipping Wild Animals The Sea Tragedy Of The Jungle Folk “Killing A Man-Eater” Up A Tree In The Jungle “IT was the lure of the circus—the tug that every boy feels when a show comes to town — that started me on my career as a collector of wild animals. I use the word collector rather than hunter, because hunting gives the idea of killing and, in my business, a dead animal is no animal at all. In fact, the mere hunting of the animals was simply the beginning of my work, and the task of capturing them uninjured was far more thrilling than standing at a distance and pulling a trigger. And then, when animals were safely in the net or stockade, came the job of taking them back through the jungle to the port where they could be sold. It was often a case of continuous performance until I stood on the dock and saw the boats steam away with the cages aboard. And I wasn't too sure of the success of my expedition even then, because the animals I had yanked from the jungle might die before they reached their destination. I was nearly seventeen when Sells Brothers' Circus came to Binghamton, New York, where I was living with my parents. That day I joined some other boys in playing hookey from school, and we earned our passes by carrying water for the animals. It wasn't my first circus, but it was the first time that I had ever worked around the animals and I was fascinated. I didn't miss the big show, but all the rest of the day I was in the menagerie, listening to the yarns of the keepers and doing as much of their work as they would allow. That night, when the circus left town, I stowed away in a wagon.” "In Singapore there was a rich Chinese leper, known as Ong Si Chou, who asked me repeatedly why I did not bring him some new remedy for his disease. Since he had a large household of servants who took care of him, and his own carriages and rickshaws when he traveled, he was allowed to live untroubled by the authorities; but he was very unhappy, because he had tried all the remedies of the native doctors and was steadily growing worse. At last I told him that I had something that might help. He asked me what it was but I would not tell him. When he insisted, I answered, 'Snakes.'"

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