/I ©alifoproia ^pamp 



I. 



PrePiminan^ 



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^^HE reading of Freaiont's Narrative and other works 

 of Western adventure gave me, during the last two 

 or three years of my minority, a great desire to 

 travel over the trans-Mississippi plains and mountains. The 

 departure of a friend and schoolmate for Oregon, on a sur- 

 veying expedition, still further unsettled me, and showed my 

 prosaic home life in yet more unfavorable contrast with the 

 possibilities which Western travel would furnish; and when, 

 in the spring of 1858, I secured a situation in the interior 

 of Michigan, I concluded I had made one step in the coveted 

 direction, and was partially satisfied. 



I never shall forget the night when, having bid farewell to 

 the home circle, I left Philadelphia for the West. The hour 

 w^as eleven of the clock; darkness all around and the weather 

 stormy; and not knowing a soul on board, or in my prospective 

 home, I sank into a fit of the blues, not of the " deeply, beauti- 

 fully " sort, but rather, from the sensations I felt, as if tinged 



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