[LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.]
- [(Portrait) The traveler at the journey's end.]
- ["I bade my friends farewell."]
- ["We consumed a half hour in the gigantic task."]
- ["I found the captive drinking with other jackasses."]
- ["We tramped tired and footsore into the village."]
- ["Mac could draw my luggage instead of carrying it."]
- ["Mac's little legs would get stuck."]
- ["Mac supervised the work."]
- ["The only time I got ahead of him."]
- ["I scrutinized his hat inquisitively."]
- ["He accused me of attempting suicide."]
- ["We made slow headway to the Mississippi.]
- ["In this way I crossed that bridge of size."]
- [ "And I saw the streak of daylight."]
- [ "Mac was so slow that his shadow beat him to town."]
- ["Over the Platte bridge, after blindfolding them."]
- ["I killed my first rattlesnake."]
- ["That was the town of Korty."]
- ["Climbing Pike's Peak."]
- [ "He had caught a nice mess of trout."]
- [ "Trail through the timber."]
- [ "Independence Pass; one of the loftiest of the Continental Divide."]
- [ "Trail to Florisant."]
- [ "Two days of hard climbing to cross Western Pass."]
- ["Through thickets, tangled roots and fallen trees."]
- ["To swim and float on Salt Lake."]
- ["Skull Valley desert, we stopped to feed and rest."]
- ["The last and only drop."]
- ["Just finished lunch when the possé arrived."]
- ["Coonskin and I took shelter behind our donkeys."]
- ["Through Devil's Gate, their panniers scraped the walls of the rocky gateway."]
- ["Fired their revolvers in the air."]
- ["Some Piute Indians who had camped close by."]
- ["Playing Solitaire on Damfino's broad back."]
- ["Began to plow snow toward Placerville.]
- ["The cattle passed us, after we donks had broken the trail."]
- ["Across on the exclusive Solano."]
- ["I pointed toward the goal."]
- ["The ferry approach in 'Frisco was choked with a rabble."]
[PROLOGUE.]
This is as true a story of my "voyage" as I am capable of writing. Besides the newspaper accounts, two magazine articles, illustrated on this subject have been published, the only ones contributed by me, and they hardly outlined the trip. I have left out a hundred interesting incidents and culled and edited until I am tired, in order to condense this volume to convenient size. On the other hand, notable adventures only recalled by my photographs have been cheated of a mention, because the donkey ate my notes—he ate everything in sight, and did not discriminate between a comic circus poster and a tragic diary.
Ever since completing the trip, I have promised this book "next month," but owing to the checkered career of the MS. with ninety-seven publishers (all of whom declared that the book should be brought out at once, but they lacked the nerve to publish it), I am only now able to fulfil my promises. This is no romance. When I did not walk with the donkey or carry him, he carried me the whole four thousand and ninety-six miles, which includes the distance traveled when he balked and backed.
With my two cameras I secured six hundred pictures descriptive of the journey across eleven states, through the four seasons, during that long, long year; only by them and my diary am I brought to realize it is not a wild, weird dream. Now it is over, I sometimes smile over things recalled which, when they happened, found me as serious as the donk—grave in the superlative degree—and thoughtless people and those who never even crossed the plains by train may style my experience a mere outing or "picnic." General Fremont and other distinguished pioneers emphasize in their writings the pleasures of their overland trips. They, as did the emigrants of the '40s and '50s, set out in spring time from the Missouri or the Mississippi in companies, with money, wagons, cattle and supplies, and with one-third of the continent already behind them. The Indians and big game of the prairies provided excitement that lent a charm to the undertaking; it is dull monotony that kills.