Overland Journeys: Travels in the West, 1800-1880
Western settlers created what we think of as the American West. Explorers came and went, soldiers came and went, miners and others came and went. But the settlers came to stay. For settlers, the ways of reaching a destination in the frontier country were either wretched ordeals or wondrous adventures. Fortunately, many of these men and women recorded daily events and their thoughts with such picturesque zest that some accounts of westward journeys have elements of great literature within them.