Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

Illustrations have been repositioned to be within the pages referenced by the List of Illustrations, and the phrase “To face page” has been removed from their captions.

Redundant “CHAPTER” headings have been removed from this eBook.

Text uses both “dam” and “damn”.

The List of Illustrations listed the last two illustrations in reverse order (but with correct page numbers). They have been switched to the proper sequence in this eBook.

Page 141: “hear it if killed” probably is a misprint for “hear if it killed”.

Page 174: semi-colon added after “as it then was”.

Page 197: “If I could have have laid” was printed that way.