Books with author Mayne Reid

Land of Ethiope! whose burning centre seems unapproachable as the frozen Pole! Land of the unicorn and the lion, of the crouching panther and the stately elephant, of the camel, the camel-leopard, and the camel-bird! Land of the antelopes, of the wild gemsbok, and the gentle gazelle, land of the gigantic crocodile and huge river-horse, land teeming with animal life, and, last in the list of my apostrophic appellations—last, and that which must grieve the heart to pronounce it, land of the slave!

A woman in a wood—encountered accidentally, and alone. ’Tis an encounter to challenge curiosity—even though she be but a gipsy, or a peasant girl gathering sticks. If a high-born dame, beautiful,—and, above all, bright-haired,—curiosity is no longer the word; but admiration, involuntary, unrestrained—bordering upon adoration. It is but the instinct of man’s heart to worship the fairest object, upon which man’s eye may rest; and this is a beautiful woman, with bright hair, met in the middle of a wood. Marion Wade possessed all the conditions to merit such exalted admiration. She was high-born, beautiful, and bright-haired. She was alone in a wood. It did not detract from the interest of the situation, that she was mounted on a white horse, carried a hawk on her hand, and was followed by a hound. She was unaccompanied by human creature—hawk, hound, and horse being her only companions. It must have been her choice to be thus unattended. Wishing it, the daughter of Sir Marmaduke Wade might have had for escort a score of retainers.

Leopold Classic Library is delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive collection. As part of our on-going commitment to delivering value to the reader, we have also provided you with a link to a website, where you may download a digital version of this work for free. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. Whilst the books in this collection have not been hand curated, an aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature. As a result of this book being first published many decades ago, it may have occasional imperfections. These imperfections may include poor picture quality, blurred or missing text. While some of these imperfections may have appeared in the original work, others may have resulted from the scanning process that has been applied. However, our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. While some publishers have applied optical character recognition (OCR), this approach has its own drawbacks, which include formatting errors, misspelt words, or the presence of inappropriate characters. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with an experience that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic book, and that the occasional imperfection that it might contain will not detract from the experience.

Away over the dark, wild waves of the rolling Atlantic—away beyond the summer islands of the Western Ind—lies a lovely land. Its surface-aspect carries the hue of the emerald; its sky is sapphire; its sun is a globe of gold. It is the land of Anahuac! The tourist turns his face to the Orient—the poet sings the gone glories of Greece—the painter elaborates the hackneyed pictures of Apennine and Alp—the novelist turns the skulking thief of Italy into a picturesque bandit, or, Don Quixote-like, betaking himself into the misty middle age, entertains the romantic miss and milliner’s apprentice with stories of raven steeds, of plumed and impossible heroes. All—painter, poet, tourist, and novelist—in search of the bright and beautiful, the poetic and the picturesque—turn their backs upon this lovely land.

Who has not heard of the Himalayas—those Titanic masses of mountains that interpose themselves between the hot plains of India and the cold table-lands of Thibet—a worthy barrier between the two greatest empires in the world, the Mogul and the Celestial? The veriest tyro in geography can tell you that they are the tallest mountains on the surface of the earth; that their summits—a half-dozen of them at least—surmount the sea-level by more than five miles of perpendicular height; that more than thirty of them rise above twenty thousand feet, and carry upon their tops the eternal snow!

Away over the dark, wild waves of the rolling Atlantic—away beyond the summer islands of the Western Ind—lies a lovely land. Its surface-aspect carries the hue of the emerald; its sky is sapphire; its sun is a globe of gold. It is the land of Anahuac! The tourist turns his face to the Orient—the poet sings the gone glories of Greece—the painter elaborates the hackneyed pictures of Apennine and Alp—the novelist turns the skulking thief of Italy into a picturesque bandit, or, Don Quixote-like, betaking himself into the misty middle age, entertains the romantic miss and milliner’s apprentice with stories of raven steeds, of plumed and impossible heroes. All—painter, poet, tourist, and novelist—in search of the bright and beautiful, the poetic and the picturesque—turn their backs upon this lovely land.

Quadrupeds: What They are and Where Found is a classic mammal studies text by Mayne Reid. Writer Mayne Reid examines the wide variety of fur-bearing four-legged animals otherwise known as "quadrupeds" in this classic work of non-fiction. The 24 chapters that Reid outlines in this book are dedicated to 24 distinct groups of quadrupeds ranging from mice to elephants. In each chapter, Reid describes each of the species known within the group making this book a nearly comprehensive guide to the mammal life on earth.