Chapter I: Preface

The first part of this new volume of the _American Fights and Fighters Series_ needs no special introduction. Partly to make this the same size as the other books, but more particularly because I especially desired to give a permanent place to some of the most dramatic and interesting episodes in our history--especially as most of them related to the Pacific and the Far West--the series of papers in part second was included.

"The Yarn of the _Essex_, Whaler" is abridged from a quaint account written by the Mate and published in an old volume which is long since out of print and very scarce. The papers on the _Tonquin_, John Paul Jones, and "The Great American Duellists" speak for themselves. The account of the battle of the Pitt River has never been published in book form heretofore. The last paper "On Being a Boy Out West" I inserted because I enjoy it myself, and because I have found that others young and old who have read it generally like it also.

Thanks are due and are hereby extended to the following magazines for permission to republish various articles which originally appeared in their pages: _Harper's_, _Munseys_, _The Cosmopolitan_, _Sunset_ and _The New Era_.

I project another volume of the Series supplementing the two Indian volumes immediately preceding this one, but the information is hard to get, and the work amid many other demands upon my time, proceeds slowly.

CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY.

ST. GEORGE'S RECTORY,

Kansas City, Mo., February, 1910.

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