In sending out the following sheets, the Author has done what 
a year ago was as far removed from the path of his intentions, as the 
theatre of the incidents related is from the fireside at which they were 
written. But who can estimate the force of circumstances in shaping 
his destiny'? 
I wrote my Travels in the Great Western Prairies, &c., with little 
belief that they would excite any attention beyond the circle in which 
personal friendship would in some sense link the reader with the events 
narrated. I did not comprehend the extensive interest felt in journey- 
ings over the wild and barren realms of uncultivated Nature. I did 
not suppose that the dim outline which words could give of the snow- 
clad peak, the desert vale, and the trials and dangers which crowd 
about the pilgrim on the Western Deserts and Mountains, could be 
made sufficiently distinct to convey even a satisfactory shadow of their 
sublime, fearful nature. But the very unexpected favor with which 
that work has been received, has led me to conclude that such matters, 
related as far as they may be at all, with fidelity, are valued as useful 
knowledge. Indeed, we may learn much from the pulseless solitudes 
—from the desert untrodden by the foot of living things—from the 
frozen world of mountains, whose chasms and cliffs never echoed to 
aught, but the thunder-tempests girding their frozen peaks—from old 
Nature, piled, rocky, bladeless, toneless—if we will allow its lessons 
of awe to reach the mind, and impress it with the fresh and holy 
images which they were made to inspire. 
The work now presented is another attempt of the same kind. It 
differs from the previous one, however, in many particulars. The 
Great South Sea, the Hawaian Islands, and the Californias are its 
