United States Books

CHAPTER I THE FRONTIER Last spring, 1846, was a busy season in the City of St. Louis. Not only were emigrants from every part of the country preparing for the journey to Oregon and California, but an unusual number of traders were making ready their wagons and outfits for Santa Fe. Many of the emigrants, especially of those bound for California, were persons of wealth and standing. The hotels were... more...

PREFACE. A quarter of a century's experience in frontier life, a great portion of which has been occupied in exploring the interior of our continent, and in long marches where I have been thrown exclusively upon my own resources, far beyond the bounds of the populated districts, and where the traveler must vary his expedients to surmount the numerous obstacles which the nature of the country... more...

SIGHTS AND SCENES INOREGON, WASHINGTON AND ALASKA. Oregon is a word derived from the Spanish, and means "wild thyme," the early explorers finding that herb growing there in great profusion. So far as we have any record Oregon seems to have been first visited by white men in 1775; Captain Cook coasted down its shores in 1778. Captain Gray, commanding the ship "Columbia," of Boston,... more...

INTRODUCTION INCE the first and second editions of "In the Footprints of the Padres" appeared, many things have transpired. San Francisco has been destroyed and rebuilt, and in its holocaust most of the old landmarks mentioned in the pages that follow as then existing, have been obliterated. Since then, too, the gentle heart, much of whose story is told herein, has been hushed in death. Charles... more...

Introductory It is not everyone's business, nor would it be everyone's pleasure, to visit the United States of America. More, perhaps, than in any other country that I know of will what the traveller finds there depend on what he brings with him. Preconception will easily fatten into a perfect mammoth of realisation; but the open mind will add immeasurably to its garner of interests and... more...

The Californian loves his state because his state loves him. He returns her love with a fierce affection that to men who do not know California is always a surprise. Hence he is impatient of outside criticism. Those who do not love California cannot understand her, and, to his mind, their shafts, however aimed, fly wide of the mark. Thus, to say that California is commercially asleep, that her... more...

CHAPTER I. THE BENEFITS OF COMMERCE HAVE INDUCED SEVERAL PRINCES TO SEEK AN EASIER ROUTE FOR TRAFFIC WITH THE PEOPLE OF THE EAST.—SEVERAL UNSUCCESSFUL VOYAGES.—DETERMINATION OF THE FRENCH FOR THIS PURPOSE.—UNDERTAKING OF SIEUR DE MONTS: HIS COMMISSION AND ITS REVOCATION.—NEW COMMISSION TO SIEUR DE MONTS TO ENABLE HIM TO CONTINUE HIS UNDERTAKING. The inclinations of men differ according to their... more...

CHAPTER I Early in 1859 gold was discovered in Colorado, and Horace Greeley, the well known writer and a power throughout the country both before and during the Civil War, made, in the interest of the New York Tribune, of which he was editor, an overland trip to Denver by the first stage line run in that day. He started from Leavenworth, Kansas, and with the exception of Mr. Richardson, of the Boston... more...

CHAPTER I. GERMANY AND THE ARMY The stalwart men of the Prussian army, the Lancers, the Dragoons, the Hussars, the clank of their sabres on the pavements, their brilliant uniforms, all made an impression upon my romantic mind, and I listened eagerly, in the quiet evenings, to tales of Hanover under King George, to stories of battles lost, and the entry of the Prussians into the old Residenz-stadt; the... more...

The old San Francisco is dead. The gayest, lightest hearted, most pleasure loving city of the western continent, and in many ways the most interesting and romantic, is a horde of refugees living among ruins. It may rebuild; it probably will; but those who have known that peculiar city by the Golden Gate, have caught its flavor of the Arabian Nights, feel that it can never be the same. It is as though a... more...