More than a travel book, more than an autobiography, Ruxon of the Rockies is a rare and vivid account of a man who lived during a heroic age: George Frederick Ruxton lived among and wrote about the traders and trappers of the American West. Ruxton crammed a dozen lifetimes of adventure into his brief twenty-seven years. Leaving his native England in 1838, at the age of seventeen, he set out on endless journeys--fighting in the Carlist Wars in Spain, stationed with the British army in Ireland, hunting with Indians in Upper Canada, attempting to penetrate to the interior of Africa, and carrying out a mission for his government in Mexico and the American West. In all his travels, nothing won his heart so completely as the Rocky Mountains. With the awareness of a poet and down-to-earth nature of an explorer, Ruxton wrote of their awesome grandeur, bountiful wildlife, hardy mountain men, and their inexorable annihilation of the weakling. While on his way for a second, more extended visit to his beloved Rockies, Ruxton died in St. Louis. A rewarding literary experience, this volume is essentially Ruxton's autobiography. Sections on Africa and the one on Mexico and the Rocky Mountains appeared during Ruxton's lifetime, but earlier portions have never been published before.   Ruxton of the Rockies is illustrated with sketches from his notebooks and reproductions of the incomparable watercolors of Alfred Jacob Miller, a great Western artist of Ruxton's time.