Adventures in the United States.

Then, when conditions eased down, and the Constabulary forces were reduced, the craving for adventure called in another direction. The stalwart young colonial worked his passage to San Francisco, and followed the eternal lure, something waiting just across the range. He roved about the Western States of America, from the forests of California and the slopes of the Rockies down to the Sierra Nevada and the plains of the Rio Grande.

There was adventure enough now, in the lumber camps, on the gold trail, page 18 page 19 and on the ranches. Wild country and rough men. The “long Britisher,” as they called him, consistently declined to carry a gun, though he could use one quite well enough, and thereby, as he told me once, avoided much trouble. Had he followed the custom of the country, toted a six-shooter and absorbed much “red licker,” he would probably have died suddenly with his boots on in some corner of the Wild West. As it was, he had to swim the Rio Negro at night, on one critical occasion, with revolvers popping drunkenly after him, to place the river between him and some determined patriots who didn't care for the looks of that long Britisher.

“They had a rope with them,” he explained, “and this Britisher thought it prudent, under the circumstances, to leave the shanty by the back-door and take to the creek.”

His company obviously not being desired along the Rio Negro, Best travelled unobtrusively as far north as he could get, and he saw a good deal of the Sierras and the big trees.

That was in the early and mid-'Eighties, when life was still wide-open and free in the Western States where the population in these days is chiefly engaged in helping to make cinema pictures and running “dude ranches” for Eastern tenderfeet.

Elsdon Best returned to his native land, and the quiet life, and worked at a variety of callings.