George Alfred Henty was a well-known prolific author of historical adventure novels and his books are also known for being historically accurate, making them both entertaining and educational for all readers.<br /><br />First published in 1887, &quot;A Final Reckoning&quot; (AKA &quot;<i>A Final Reckoning: A Tale of Bush Life in Australia</i>&quot;) is an exciting adventure of outlaws in the early days of the Australian gold rush, when fortunes were made and stolen, and when bush rangers and natives constituted a real and formidable danger to the settlers.<br />The novel tells the story of a young English lad who, after rather a stormy boyhood, emigrates to Australia and gets employment as an officer in the mounted police. A few years of active work on the frontier, where he has many a brush with both natives and bush-rangers, gain him promotion to a captaincy, and he eventually settles down to the peaceful life of a squatter...