Pioneers in India.






PREFACE


I have been asked to write a series of works which should deal with
"real adventures", in parts of the world either wild and uncontrolled
by any civilized government, or at any rate regions full of dangers,
of wonderful discoveries; in which the daring and heroism of white men
(and sometimes of white women) stood out clearly against backgrounds
of unfamiliar landscapes, peopled with strange nations, savage tribes,
dangerous beasts, or wonderful birds. These books would again and
again illustrate the first coming of the white race into regions
inhabited by people of a different type, with brown, black, or yellow
skins; how the European was received, and how he treated these races
of the soil which gradually came under his rule owing to his superior
knowledge, weapons, wealth, or powers of persuasion. The books were to
tell the plain truth, even if here and there they showed the white man
to have behaved badly, or if they revealed the fact that the American
Indian, the Negro, the Malay, the black Australian was sometimes cruel
and treacherous.

A request thus framed was almost equivalent to asking me to write
stories of those pioneers who founded the British Empire; in any case,
the first volumes of this series do relate the adventures of those who