The Treasure of Pearls

French adventure writer Gustave Aimard drew on his own years roaming the Americas for this tale of fortune-hunting across the wild borderlands of California and Mexico. The search for a hidden hoard of pearls sends its characters through desert, mountain, and the lawless country beyond settled towns, where the line between treasure seeker and outlaw blurs quickly. Aimard fills the pages with hard riding, ambushes, and the sort of frontier color that made him a French rival to James Fenimore Cooper. The plot is pure adventure, built for pace rather than nuance, but it carries the conviction of a writer who had actually lived among trappers and Native peoples of the West. This free PDF and EPUB edition revives a once-popular yarn.