The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains

<p>Originally published in 1858 at the height of the passion for exotic specimens this is the story of a young Bavarian botanist Karl Linden engaged in a plant-hunting expedition to the stupendous mountains of the Himalayas in Tibet.</p><p> </p><p>It is a vivid early narrative and primary souce with commentaries on the Himalayas plant hunting inspecting cliffs the Ibex & other fauna ascent of mountains aerostatics and of course the botany and value of the plants they are collecting.</p><p> </p><p>Mayne Reid a pre-eminent and popular writer was primarily a novelist (1818-1883) who wrote adventure stories from just before the Civil War until his death in 1883. Reid's career included two periods in the U. S: 1840-49 and 1867-70.</p><p> </p><p>He had emigrated to the United States in his early twenties reaching New Orleans in January 1840 where he pursued a varied career as a shopkeeper overseer of slaves schoolmaster and actor with occasional forays into hunting and Indian warfare.</p><p> </p><p>Reid returned to England in 1849 and embarked upon a successful career as a writer of adventure novels and books for boys He was a close friend of Poe (though their writings were miles apart) played a gallant role in the Mexican War worked as a journalist and wrote most of his first novel while in the United States.</p><p> </p><p>He was an influence on the young mind of Teddy Roosevelt as Roosevelt reveals in his Autobiography; while Arthur Conan Doyle wrote in his 1890s essay Juvenilia that when young he always kept Mr. Ballantyne or Captain Mayne Reid at my elbow; Robert Louis Stevenson praised Reid in the Vailima Letters and J. Frank Dobie has said he dared convey real information in his romances.</p><p> </p>