First publications Hesketh-Prichard, then nineteen, wrote his first story "Tammer's Duel" in the summer of 1896, which his mother helped him refine, and was sold soon after to
Pall Mall Magazine for a
guinea. That year he abandoned a career in law and spent the summer travelling around southern Europe and North Africa. He spent the sea-time on the trip writing or planning plots. Hesketh-Prichard's circle of literary friends widened and he became acquainted with the likes of
Arthur Conan Doyle and
J. M. Barrie. In 1897 Barrie introduced him to the press baron
Cyril Arthur Pearson, who suggested he write a series of ghost stories for his monthly ''
Pearson's Magazine. He later wrote a vivid account of his travels in the popular book Where Black Rules White: A Journey Across and About Hayti''. Pearson welcomed his reports, and on his return immediately commissioned him to travel to
Patagonia to investigate dramatic rumours of a hairy beast roaming the land. The animal was conjectured by
Natural History Museum director
Ray Lankester to be a living example of the long-extinct
giant ground sloth. Lake Pearson was subsequently renamed Lake Anita, but the Río Caterina, known for its salmon, retains the name Hesketh-Prichard gave it. The surrounding area is now part of
Los Glaciares National Park. Although he found no traces of the creature after a year overseas and of travel, he did provide compelling descriptions of unknown areas of the country, its fauna and inhabitants. He compiled the story of his travels in the well-received
Through the Heart of Patagonia.
Labrador Hesketh-Prichard first visited
Atlantic Canada in August 1903, travelling up the coasts of
Labrador and
Newfoundland, and donating the heads of stags he had shot to the Newfoundland Exhibition then in London. He returned in October 1904, this time with his mother, and the cricketer
Teddy Wynyard. His most ambitious trip to the region was however in July 1910, when he undertook to explore the interior of Labrador, saying "it seemed to us a pity that such a
terra incognita should continue to exist under the British flag". This same territory had claimed the life of writer
Leonidas Hubbard a few years earlier. He described his journey up the
Fraser River to access Indian House Lake on
George River in the popular
Through Trackless Labrador in 1911.
Further writing In 1904, the mother-and-son writing team produced
The Chronicles of Don Q., a collection of short stories featuring the fictional rogue Don Quebranta Huesos, a Spanish
Robin Hood-like figure who was fierce to the evil rich but kind-hearted to the virtuous poor. A second collection,
The New Chronicles of Don Q. followed in 1906. The pair produced a full-length novel, ''Don Q.'s Love Story
, in 1909. Don Q.
was brought to the stage in 1921 when it was performed at the Apollo Theatre, London. In 1925, the book was reworked as a Zorro vehicle by screenwriters Jack Cunningham and Lotta Woods; the United Artists silent film Don Q, Son of Zorro was produced by Douglas Fairbanks, who also starred as its lead character. The New York Times'' rated the film one of its top ten movies of the year. In 1913, writing on his own, Hesketh-Prichard created the crime-fighting figure
November Joe, a hunter and backwoodsman from the Canadian wilderness. It was broadcast as a
radio play by the
BBC on 23 September 1970. In 1921, he wrote
Sport in Wildest Britain, in which he shared his experiences of bird shooting, particularly in the
Outer Hebrides. Britain's first legal protection for non-game mammals. His article "Slaughtered for Fashion" in the March 1914 ''Pearson's Magazine'' argued to protect birds from
plume hunting, their large-scale slaughter for hat feathers. == Cricket ==