The following letters, as is generally known, were written to THE NEW
YORK TRIBUNE during a journey through Kansas, Utah, and California, last
summer.
No one can be more conscious than the writer that they present the
slightest possible claims to literary merit or enduring interest. Their
place is among the thousand ephemeral productions of the press on which
the reading public, if good-natured, bestows a kindly glance, then
charitably forgets them. Ten years hence, hardly a hundred persons will
be able, without sustained effort, to recollect that these letters were
ever printed. Hurriedly written, mainly in wagons or under the rudest
tents, while closely surrounded by the (very limited) appliances and
processes of pioneer meal-getting, far from books of reference, and
often in the absence of even the commonest map, they deal with surfaces
only, and these under circumstances which preclude the idea of
completeness of information or uniform accuracy of statement. The value
of such a work, if value it have, must be sought in unstudied simplicity
of narration, in the freshness of its observations, and in the truth of
its averments as transcripts of actual experiences and current
impressions.
By consulting and studying the reports of eminent official explorers and
pioneers, from Lewis and Clark to Fremont and Lander, who have traversed
the Plains, the Rocky Mountains, and the Great Basin, a far more
complete and reliable book might have been made, but one extending to
several volumes, and of which the public does not seem to stand in
conscious, urgent need. That herewith submitted, though of far humbler
pretensions, has at least the merit of owing little or nothing to any
other.
If any excuse for printing these letters were wanted, it might be found
in the fact that much of the ground passed over by the writer was
absolutely new—that is, it had never before been traversed and
described. The route up Solomon’s Fork and the upper portion of the
Republican, from the forks of the Kansas to Cherry Creek; that from
Denver to the gold diggings in the Rocky Mountains, near Ralston’s fork
of Clear Creek; the trail from Denver to Laramie, along the eastern base
of the Rocky Mountains; and that from Salt Lake south-westwardly through
central Utah to Pleasant Valley, and thence northwestwardly to the
Humboldt at Gravelly Ford, are believed to stand in this category. But
another reason for printing these hasty sketches is found in the fact
that very great and rapid changes in most of the region lying directly
between Missouri and California are inevitable. The Leavenworth Express
route, through the heart of what in June is the Buffalo region, which
was hardly four weeks old when I traveled it, was soon after abandoned,
and has reverted to the domain of the wolf and the savage; while the
rude beginning of a settlement I found, scarcely three weeks old, at
“Gregory’s Diggings,” has since been “Mountain City,” with its
municipality, its newspaper, and its thousands of inhabitants; and is
now in its decline, having attained the ripe age of nearly half-a-year;
Captain Simpson has, since July, completed his exploration of a military
and mail-route through Central Utah, whereby more than a hundred miles
of that I traveled are saved and the detested Humboldt wholly avoided;
and Carson Valley, under the impetus of rich mineral discoveries, is
rapidly increasing in population and consequence, and about to stand
forth, the nucleus of the embryo Territory of Nevada. Whoever visits
California a few years hence, will doubtless find it greatly changed
from the California so hastily run over but faithfully described by me
in August, 1859. Should, then, a few copies of this book, lost in the
dustiest recess of some all-embracing, indiscriminate library, evade the
trunk-makers to the close of the next decade, the antiquary of 1870 may
derive gratification if not instruction from a contrast of the populous,
enterprising, and thrifty Central North America of his day, with that
same region overrun and roughly depicted by me in the summer of 1859.
Should such prove the fact, I commend my hasty letters to his generous
indulgence.