CONCLUSION. 313 



to what it was thirty years ago, when the traveler and his 

 friends bade farewell, doubting if they would ever meet again. 

 Now, in the comforts of sleeping and drawing-room cars, with 

 all his wants prepared for in advance, his itinerary marked 

 out and his hotel bills and carriage hire paid, he smilingly 

 starts on his way and in a week is at its end. Then, if an 

 emigrant, for two months it was an alternation of march and 

 guard duty, or, if he traveled as I did, a journey of six months 

 when every day in the w^eek was utilized, and when those of 

 an inquiring turn had no chance of satisfying their minds of 

 the doings of the great world outside except what they saw in 

 stale papers at forts and trading-posts, or heard from chance 

 travelers they met. Owing to my limited chances I could not 

 keep a continuous diary on my travels. On the route to Salt 

 Lake we suffered so much from daily hardship and nightly 

 loss of sleep that, in my short vacations, I felt more like rest- 

 ing than writing, so would have to wait and fill them up 

 wholesale when storms or accident gave me a chance. On 

 my arrival home I re-wrote and amplified these notes and 

 published, all up to my California experience, in a local paper, 

 not feeling able to place the result in book-form, as I wished. 



Does the present work have that necessary adjunct, a 

 Moral ? True, many readers do not care for such, but are 

 satisfied to skim over their readings, careless whether their 

 morals are good or bad. In my tender youth, w^hen I read 

 iEsop's Fables, I always "skipped " the Morals as too ponder- 

 ous for my understanding, being satisfied to revel in the talks 

 and actions of apes and foxes, wolves and lambs, lions and 

 asses and other impossible conversationalists. But some read- 

 ers look for results independent of the pleasures of transient 

 perusal: some good to humanity coming from the author's 

 experience. 



When "Two Years Before the Mast" was written the author 

 obtained more than the popularity it created, although it is as 

 20 



