Adventure Magazine Cover, October 1911 — page 43: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

aa mit Citas A GREAT AMERICAN ADVENTURER CHINESE WARD, SOLDIER OF FORTUNE AND MAKER OF HISTORY O@eeeeN THE early Autumn of 1860 a New York merchant interested in the machinery and junk busi- ness received a letter from Shang- ‘hai, China, which interested him curiously. It was from an old friend and associate, whom he had believed to be another ex- ample of unaccountable disappearance, though not for the first time in this strange man’s career. Frederick Townsend Ward had gone to Mexico more than two years before to sell some old ordnance to the Government. Having accomplished this in due season, he had suddenly dropped out of ken, on the eve of supposedly returning home. Fancy, then, the surprise which greeted these words, if any act of so erratic a person could amaze his friends: - BY G'T-FERRIS I have entered into the Chinese Service, have very fine prospects at present and hope soon to have a comfortable fortune. I have been trans- formed from a Yankee into a Chinaman in good style, with a good establishment. I, a few days ago, took the second city of importance in the vice- royalty from the rebels. I have made a pretty good thing of it and hope in a few weeks to take another city. This communication was a veritable bolt from the blue. A restless, almost penniless vagabond of a man, whom his friends had given up as lost, suddenly emerging in China as a master of men and a conquerer of cities! Our own bloody slaughter-house had not yet opened its shambles, but the newspapers were so absorbed in an extraor- dinary political situation that they gave scarcely a paragraph to such a curious piece of news when it was made known to them. 989 CO MICLMOOOKS C© 5}