The Pathless Trail

The Treasure of Atlantis, by J. Allan Dunn, [1916], at sacred-texts.com

p. 127

Advertisement

The following period advertisement followed the text of this book in the proof edition. It has been transcribed for completeness.

SWASHBUCKLING JUNGLE ADVENTURE

In the year 1925, the controversial Englishman, Colonel P. H. Fawcett disappeared into the remote mountain country of Brazil to a fate that baffled a curious world. Colonel Fawcett had excited archeologists and armchair adventurers with his quest for a lost prehistoric city which he believed to exist in this unexplored hinterland.

Three years earlier, a lone American—a teller of tales and a searcher after truth—ventured into the dangerous and unknown region of the Brazilian-Venezuelan border on a quest of his own. The land that he entered was the most fearsome in the world—the land of the sixty-foot sucuruju (anaconda), ruthless cannibals, and jungle disease; a land which a Conan or a Solomon Kane might think twice about entering. Yet Arthur Olney Friel entered this world seeking the truth behind the many legends and tales of white Indians in the back of beyond. And he returned to chronicle his adventures and his deductions in the poetically

(continued on next page)

p. 128

titled non-fiction volume, THE RIVER OF SEVEN STARS.

But Friel was best known in those days for his fiction. A prolific and accomplished writer, he wrote his novels of high adventure about the fearsome jungle that he knew first hand, and which he flavored with his own fertile imagination.

THE PATHLESS TRAIL is a fitting novel to initiate the "Time-Lost" series from Centaur Press. It is a swashbuckler; heroic, fastmoving, and loaded to the hilt with savage creatures and men of the unexplored jungle. It is a book of conflict, and its heroes are men of conflict.

THE PATHLESS TRAIL is the first of a quartet of books that grow progressively more imaginative with each title. Historically, these novels appeared as long serials in the grand old pulp magazine of the 1920's, Adventure, prior to appearing in book form in both this country and in England. Other Adventure stalwarts of the period included Talbot Mundy, Harold Lamb, Hugh Pendexter, and Arthur D. Howden Smith; an array that influenced a youthful Robert E. Howard and enthralled many thousands of readers.

Featuring white Indians, weird creatures, and dreams of empire, the series has lain half-forgotten, half-buried, its once great popularity in the shadow of almost fifty years. But to this day it remains an exciting and powerful series for the armchair adventurer.

Watch for these other Centaur Press books by Arthur O. Friel:

TIGER RIVER

THE KING OF NO MAN'S LAND

MOUNTAINS OF MYSTERY