The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Desert Home, by Mayne Reid

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Title: The Desert Home
The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness

Author: Mayne Reid

Release Date: January 13, 2008 [EBook #24268]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DESERT HOME ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

The Desert Home, by Captain Mayne Reid.

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This was one of the first books that Mayne Reid wrote. Its action takes
place in a central part of North America, designated a Desert. Some
people set out to travel in this central desert, when they somewhat lose
their way. Luckily they eventually spot the light of a farm-house,
where they knock and receive hospitality.

Their kind host and his family then explain to them how they came to
live where they do, and what a lovely place it is. Reid is very
knowledgeable about animals and also plants. Much of the rest of the
book is taken up with tales of encounters with various animals, and with
stories of the uses of many trees and shrubs.

It is written in an unusual style, but in fact, because of the shortness
of the chapters, it can hold the reader's attention very well.

As with several other books by this author it had been very badly
typeset, apparently using old and damaged type. This made the OCRed
version of the text come out very full of misreads, but it was fun
tidying this up. Apologies if any more misreads come to light.

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THE DESERT HOME, BY CAPTAIN MAYNE REID.

CHAPTER ONE.

THE GREAT AMERICAN DESERT.

There is a great desert in the interior of North America. It is almost
as large as the famous Saara of Africa. It is fifteen hundred miles
long, and a thousand wide. Now, if it were of a regular shape--that is
to say, a parallelogram--you could at once compute its area, by
multiplying the length upon the breadth; and you would obtain one
million and a half for the result--one million and a half of square
miles. But its outlines are as yet very imperfectly known; and althoug