Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Fort Desolation: Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land
    Fort Desolation: Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land
    Fort Desolation: Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land
    Ebook76 pages1 hour

    Fort Desolation: Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land

    By Robert Michael Ballantyne

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    First published in 1873, "Fort Desolation: Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land" is a fantastic example of classic Western fiction written for children. Complete with fast-paced action, selfless heroism, and historical insights, this book will appeal to children with an interest in the American Old West. Robert Michael Ballantyne (1825 - 1894) was a Scottish author of children's fiction. He was a prolific writer and produced over 100 books in his lifetime. As well as being an author, Ballantyne was also an accomplished artist, having exhibited his work at the Royal Scottish Academy. Other notable works by this author include: "The Coral Island" (1858), "The Gorilla Hunters" (1861), and "The Eagle Cliff" (1889). Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction and biography of the author.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherClassic Western Fiction Library
    Release dateJul 19, 2017
    ISBN9781473346000
    Fort Desolation: Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land
    Author

    Robert Michael Ballantyne

    Robert Michael Ballantyne was a Scottish author of juvenile fiction, who wrote more than a hundred books. He was also an accomplished artist: he exhibited some of his water-colours at the Royal Scottish Academy.

    Read more from Robert Michael Ballantyne

    Related to Fort Desolation

    Related ebooks

    United States History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Must See, Must Read

      Jan 22, 2019

      (2018, by Rod Macleod): Born with a name dime novelist Ned Buntline might have made up, Samuel Benfield Steele was among the founding fathers of the North-West Mounted Police, and his own exploits helped make it legendary. Macleod’s extensive researc

      13 min read

    • Article

      Hidden Histories

      Nov 25, 2021

      Edgar Mittelholzer was a Guyanese novelist who should be remembered not just for the quality of his writing, but as the earliest recorded writer from the Caribbean to make his living from the profession. I studied Caribbean literature at university,

      3 min read

    • Article

      Must See, Must Read

      May 23, 2023

      Must See, Must Read
      9 min read

    • Article

      Must See, Must Read

      Mar 1, 2022

      Must See, Must Read
      14 min read

    • Article

      Must See, Must Read

      Sep 25, 2018

      (1936, by Neill C. Wilson): In this classic Old West history author Wilson relates the story of business partners Henry Wells (1805–78) and William Fargo (1818–81), who incorporated Wells, Fargo & Co. in 1852, chronicling the successes and struggles

      10 min read

    • Article

      State Of The State 200

      Jul 27, 2021

      State Of The State 200
      21 min read

    • Article

      Adoptive Nativist Son

      Nov 26, 2019

      Adoptive Nativist Son
      1 min read

    • Article

      The Secret History of Creative Nonfiction

      Oct 15, 2021

      A common misconception about literary history is that women weren’t writing professionally or significantly before Jane Austen. To talk about women’s historical oppression, Virginia Woolf famously conjured up an imaginary sister for William Shakespea

      8 min read

    • Article

      Hidden Histories

      Sep 2, 2021

      In 1904, an accomplished young Krio man from a middle-class family in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, set sail from the west African coast to London. Aged just 26, his aim was to make his mark on the literary world. Augustus Merriman-Labor had

      3 min read

    • Article

      Must See, Must Read

      Nov 8, 2022

      Chalk up this volume’s relative obscurity to more recent bias against “Big Sam,” warts and all. Certainly not overlooked when published last century, The Raven earned James his first Pulitzer Prize (he earned a second for his 1937 biography of Andrew

      8 min read

    • Article

      Must See, Must Read

      Oct 26, 2021

      Must See, Must Read
      12 min read

    • Article

      Those Who Left Us: Select Literary Obituaries of 2019

      Dec 31, 2019

      Death didn’t discriminate in 2019—it took down the acclaimed, the obscure, and a little bit of everything in between. The post Those Who Left Us: Select Literary Obituaries of 2019 appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    • Article

      Victorian Authors

      Mar 21, 2024

      Victorian Authors
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Landscape Was His Mistress

      Feb 9, 2022

      IN 1802, John Constable wrote seven observations and resolutions about art. In them, among other things, he pledged to follow Nature, to make ‘unaffected’ pictures, and to avoid ‘common place people’. He also declared that ‘there is no easy way of be

      5 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Dec 7, 2021

      (available at detoursatlafonda.com) Frequent Santa Fe visitors and first-timers alike will turn up in the City Different this January to celebrate 100 years of La Fonda on the Plaza (lafondasantafe.com), the iconic hotel and must-visit destination kn

      5 min read

    • Article

      Earp Fellow Sophisticates

      Aug 31, 2021

      Earp Fellow Sophisticates
      12 min read

    • Article

      Must See, Must Read

      Aug 31, 2021

      Must See, Must Read
      11 min read

    • Article

      Lone Star Stories: The 10 Best Books About Texas

      Nov 13, 2020

      a great book about Texas should not only contain historical fact, it should give readers an impression of the Lone Star state—its scents, sights, and sensations—as well as what it feels like to be a human being of fragile flesh and blood in that imme

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Old Un’s Notes

      May 4, 2022

      * With the Platinum Jubilee upon us, it’s time to look forward to the 70th anniversary of the Young Elizabethan, too. Founded in 1948 as Collins Magazine for Boys & Girls, it was renamed the Young Elizabethan to celebrate the Queen’s Coronation. In 1

      6 min read

    • Article

      Finding Facts In Fiction

      Mar 12, 2021

      Finding Facts In Fiction
      10 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Fort Desolation

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Fort Desolation - Robert Michael Ballantyne

      Fort Desolation

      Red Indians and Fur Traders

      of Rupert’s Land

      R.M. Ballantyne

      Copyright © 2016 Read Books Ltd.

      This book is copyright and may not be

      reproduced or copied in any way without

      the express permission of the publisher in writing

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available from

      the British Library

      Contents

      R. M. Ballantyne

      The History of Western Fiction

      Chapter One.

      Chapter Two.

      Chapter Three.

      Chapter Four.

      Chapter Five.

      Chapter Six.

      Chapter Seven.

      Chapter Eight.

      Chapter Nine.

      Chapter Ten.

      R. M. Ballantyne

      R.M. Ballantyne (born Robert Michael Ballantyne) was a Scottish author of popular children’s fiction and wrote more than 100 books. He was also a popular artist with his water-colours exhibited at the Royal Scottish academy.

      Ballantyne was born on 24 April 1825 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and was the ninth of ten children. His father, Alexander Thomson Ballantyne, was a newspaper editor and printer for family firm, Ballantyne and Co. His uncle, James Ballantyne, was also very literary and worked as the printer for Sir Walter Scott, the Scottish playwright, novelist and poet. In 1825 a banking crisis led to the collapse of the Ballantyne printing business with debts of approximately £130,000, leading to the decline of the family fortune.

      At age sixteen, Ballantyne left the family home and migrated to Canada where he spent five years working for Hudson’s Bay Company. He traded with the Native Americans for furs and frequently sleighed or canoed to the territories that are now known as Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec. These journeys influenced his later novel Snowflakes and Sunbeams (1856). During this time he missed home and frequently wrote to his mother. He later stated that this letter writing helped developed his literary skills.

      In 1847, Ballantyne returned home to discover that his father had died. He published his first book, Hudson’s Bay: or, Life in the Wilds of North America, in 1848. During this time he was employed by the publishing company, Messrs Constable, but gave this up in 1856 to focus on his own literary career. During his lifetime he wrote over a hundred books in regular and rapid succession. His titles include: The Young Fur Traders (1856), The Dog Crusoe (1860), Fighting the Whales (1866), The Pirate City (1874) and The Settler and the Savage (1877). His writing drew on his personal knowledge of all the scenes he described and his heroes were moral and resilient. His most popular novel was The Coral Island (1857). However, in this novel he made one small mistake when he incorrectly described the thickness of coconut shells. This small mistake led Ballantyne to gain first-hand knowledge of all the subject matters he wrote about from then onwards. He spent time living with lighthouse keepers at Bell Rock whilst writing The Lighthouse (1865) and spent time in Cornwall with tin miners when he was writing Deep Down (1868).

      During this period of his life, Ballantyne met Jane Grant, whom he married in 1866. Together they had three sons and three daughters. Ballantyne spent much of his later years living in Harrow, England. He later moved to Italy for the sake of his health. He was possibly suffaering from undiagnosed Mélière’s disease, which affects the inner ear which and can result in feelings of vertigo, tinnitus, hearing loss and a fullness in the ear. He died in Rome on 8 February 1894.

      Ballantyne is a remembered and cherished author. A Greater London Council plaque commemorates him at Duneaves on Mount Park Road in Harrow, England. Ballantyne was also a favourite of the author Robert Louis Stevenson, who was so impressed by The Coral Island that he based portions of his own adventure novel, Treasure Island (1881), on Ballantyne’s themes. Stevenson honoured Ballantyne in the introduction to Treasure Island with the poem To the Hesitating Purchaser.

      The History of Western Fiction

      Western fiction is a genre which focuses on life in the American Old West. It was popularised through novels, films, magazines, radio, and television and included many staple characters, such as the cowboy, the gunslinger, the outlaw, the lawman and the damsel in distress. The genre’s popularity peaked in the early twentieth century due to dime novels and Hollywood adaptations of Western tales, such as The Virginian, The Great Moon Rider and The Great K.A. Train Robbery. Western novels remained popular through the 1960s, however readership began to dwindle during the 1970s.

      The term the American Old West (the Wild West) usually refers to the land west of the Mississippi River and the Frontier between the settled and civilised and the open, lawless lands that resulted as the United States expanded to the Pacific Ocean. This area was largely unknown and little populated until the period between the 1860s and the 1890s when, after the American Civil War, settlement and the frontier moved west.

      The Western novel was a relatively new genre which developed from the adventure and exploration novels that had appeared before it. Two predecessors of popular Western fiction writers were Meriweather Lewis (1774-1809) and William Clarke (1770-1838). Both men were explorers and were the first to make travel and the frontier a central theme of their work. Perhaps the most popular predecessor of Western fiction was James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851). His west was idealised and romantic and his popular Leatherstockings series depicted the fight between the citizens of the frontier and the harsh wilderness that surrounded them. His titles included: The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Pathfinder (1840) and The Deerslayer (1841). His tales were often set on the American frontier, then in the Appalachian Mountains and in

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1