in financial disaster, so that in 1866 he had practically to begin the world anew. At one time he gave readings in public. In 1867 he started a paper, The Little Times, which soon ceased to exist. Never idle, incessantly working, his busy pen the same year was contributing the "Finger of Fate" to The Boy's Own Magazine, the "Fatal Cord" to The Boys of England, besides producing the "Planter Pirate." In the autumn of 1867 he went to New York, and wrote "The Child Wife," for Frank Leslie's paper, receiving 8,000 dollars for it, also starting Onward, a magazine which lasted fourteen months.
Lodge Gates, the "Ranche."
In 1870 he was in St. Luke's Hospital in that city, suffering from suppuration of his Chapultepec wound in the thigh, which it was feared would end fatally, but in 1872 he was writing the "Death Shot" for The Penny Illustrated Paper, and The New York Saturday Journal. In 1875 the "Flag of Distress" appeared in Chambers's Journal. All these tales were also published in book form by various publishers. Captain Reid was an author of many publishers, and there are few of that much maligned body but have issued, some time or other, novels of his. William Shobere (1849), Charles Street (1851), David Bogue, Routledge, Hurst & Blackett, Ward, Lock & Tyler, Tinsley, Swan Sonnenschein & Co., and Remington, are a few of the well-known names that have produced works of that active brain, which will amuse and delight us nevermore.
The "Ranche," Gerrard's Cross.
In 1882 he received a small pension, which was increased before his death, from the United States Government, on account of his services in the Mexican War. During his last years he settled down amid the lovely scenery of Herefordshire at Ross. Here he wrote "Gwen Wynn, a Romance of the Wye." Here also he grew potatoes from Mexican seed, and bred Welsh mountain sheep, with jet black bodies, snow white faces, and long white tails. The clothes he wore were made from their wool. Captain Mayne Reid's sheep were a feature of the Health Exhibition, where they attracted great attention. In The Live Stock Journal, to which he was a frequent contributor, he explained an interesting theory of his that black is the coolest colour for clothing, and white the warmest, citing in support of his contention the negro, and the polar bear, and the polar hare, and fox, which two latter are slate blue in summer, and snow
