The Peril Finders

________________________________________________________________________ This is a long and excellent book, though a rare one, and is George Manville Fenn at his very best. It starts in California, where several settlers had been trying to gain a living as fruit-growers, but the various blights and insects were getting the upper hand, and failure was in the air all round. One day an aged and deranged old prospector comes there, having walked in from the mountains and salt-plains, many hundreds of miles away. He has a belt with some excellent samples of gold, and a story that there are ancient cities out there, where gold is abundant. He has a few lucid moments just before dying. Some of the settlers decide that they might as well give up, and go in search of these gold-mountains and their ancient cities.

The distances are huge. There are episodes with rattle-snakes which are brilliantly written. Eventually they come to one of these cities, carved into the rock. They find evidence that the city had been sacked by invaders, many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years before. But while they are there they are attacked by a large number of Apaches, whom eventually they manage to beat off by an ingenious trick. So they are once again on their travels. They spend several years, but never manage to find the gold-mountains, though they do find another sacked city. Eventually they decide that enough is enough, and they make their way back to their original fruit-farms, where they find all the other neighbouring settlers gone, but to their surprise they find their own farms blooming with excellent fruit, natural predators for the blights and scale-insects having arrived on the scene. So they move back into their old farm buildings, and carry on their businesses.

There are several adults, all men, in the story, but the principals are two lads whose fathers are leading the expedition. Another hero is an American settler, who has great wisdom and character, having much more experience of the wilderness than any of the others. Other important characters are the mules that carry their equipment, and also the extremely important water kegs. The horses are very important, too. You will love this book, especially if you can make it into an audiobook, but it will be one of no mean duration.

________________________________________________________________________ THE PERIL FINDERS, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN.

CHAPTER ONE.

THE WESTERN PARADISE.

"Well, boys, where have you been?"

The speaker, a sturdy-looking, sun-tanned man, seated upon a home-made stool at a rough home-made table in a home-made house of rugged, coarsely-sawn boards, with an open roof covered in with what one of the boys had called wooden slates, had looked up from his writing, and as he spoke carefully wiped his pen--for pens were scarce--and corked the little stone bottle of ink so that it should not evaporate in the super-heated atmosphere, before it was wanted again for the writing of one of the rare letters dispatched to England, these being few, the writer preferring to wait till the much-talked-of better days came--the days for which they had been patiently waiting five years.

The boys looked sharply one at the other, their eyes seeming to say, "You tell him!" But neither of them spoke, and the penman said sharply--

"Hallo! Been in some mischief?"

The boys spoke out together then, and muddled or blurred their reply, for one said, "No, fa," being his shortening of father, and the other cried, "No, sir," both looking indignant at the suggestion. "What have you been doing, then?"

"Fishing, sir."

"Good lads!" cried the first speaker, leaning back on his seat, and starting up and grasping the rough edge of the table to save himself from falling, while the boys burst out laughing.

"Yes, you may laugh, my fine fellows," said the first speaker rather pettishly, "but it wouldn't have been pleasant for me if I had gone down."

"No, fa," said his son, colouring and speaking quickly. "I beg your pardon! I am sorry."

"I know, Chris. You didn't think. I suppose it looked droll."

"Yes, sir," said the other boy, hastily. "I beg your pardon too. You thought you were in an arm-chair, didn't you?"