Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest

J >> J. Frank Dobie >> Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest

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REID, MAYNE. _The Scalp Hunters_. An antiquated novel, but it
has some deep-dyed pictures of Mountain Men.

ROSS, ALEXANDER. _Adventures of the First Settlers on the
Oregon or Columbia River_ (1849) and _The Fur Hunters of the
Far West_ (1855). The trappers of the Southwest can no more be
divorced from the trappers of the Hudson's Bay Company than
can Texas cowboys from those of Montana.

RUSSELL, OSBORNE. _Journal of a Trapper_, Boise, Idaho, 1921.
In the winter of 1839, at Fort Hall on Snake River, Russell
and three other trappers "had some few books to read, such as
Byron, Shakespeare and Scott's works, the Bible and Clark's
Commentary on it, and some small works on geology, chemistry
and philosophy." Russell was wont to speculate on Life and
Nature. In perspective he approaches Ruxton.

RUXTON, GEORGE F. _Life in the Far West_, 1848; reprinted by
the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1951, edited by
LeRoy R. Hafen. No other contemporary of the Mountain Men has
been so much quoted as Ruxton. He remains supremely readable.

SABIN, EDWIN L. _Kit Carson Days_, 1914. A work long standard,
rich on rendezvous, bears, and many other associated subjects.
Bibliography. Republished in rewritten form, 1935. OP.

VESTAL, STANLEY (pseudonym for Walter S. Campbell). _Kit
Carson_, 1928. As a clean-running biographic narrative, it is
not likely to be superseded. _Mountain Men_, 1937, OP; _The
Old Santa Fe Trail_, 1939. Vestal's "Fandango," a tale of the
Mountain Men in Taos, is among the most spirited ballads
America has produced. It and a few other Mountain Men ballads
are contained in the slight collection, _Fandango_, 1927.
Houghton Mifflin, Boston, published the aforementioned titles.
_James Bridger, Mountain Man_, Morrow, New York, 1946, is
smoother than J. Cecil Alter's biography but not so savory.
_Joe Meek, the Merry Mountain Man_, Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho,
1952.

WHITE, STEWART EDWARD. _The Long Rifle_, 1932, and _Ranchero_,
1933, Doubleday, Doran, Garden City, N. Y. Historical fiction.

_17_

Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Trail

THERE WAS Independence on the Missouri River, then eight
hundred miles of twisting trail across hills, plains, and
mountains, all uninhabited save by a few wandering Indians and
uncountable buffaloes. Then there was Santa Fe. On west of it
lay nearly a thousand miles of wild broken lands before one
came to the village of Los Angeles. But there was no trail to
Los Angeles. At Santa Fe the trail turned south and after
crawling over the Jornada del Muerto--Journey of the Dead
Man--threading the great Pass of the North (El Paso) and
crossing a vast desert, reached Chihuahua City.

Looked at in one way, Santa Fe was a mud village. In another
way, it was the solitary oasis of human picturesqueness in a
continent of vacancy. Like that of Athens, though of an
entirely different quality, its fame was out of all proportion
to its size. In a strong chapter, entitled "A Caravan Enters
Santa Fe," R. L. Duffus _(The Santa Fe Trail)_ elaborates on
how for all travelers the town always had "the lure of
adventure." Josiah Gregg doubted whether "the first sight of
the walls of Jerusalem were beheld with much more tumultuous
and soul-enrapturing joy" than Santa Fe was by a caravan
topping the last rise and, eight hundred miles of solitude
behind it, looking down on the town's shining walls and
cottonwoods.

No other town of its size in America has been the subject of
and focus for as much good literature as Santa Fe. Pittsburgh
and dozens of other big cities all put together have not
inspired one tenth of the imaginative play that Santa Fe has
inspired. Some of the transcontinental railroads probably
carry as much freight in a day as went over the Santa Fe Trail
in all the wagons in all the years they pulled over the Santa
Fe Trail. But the Santa Fe Trail is one of the three great
trails of America that, though plowed under, fenced across,
and cemented over, seem destined for perennial travel--by
those happily able to go without tourist guides. To quote
Robert Louis Stevenson, "The greatest adventures are not those
we go to seek." The other two trails comparable to the Santa
Fe are also of the West--the Oregon Trail for emigrants and
the Chisholm Trail for cattle.

For additional literature see "Mountain Men," "Stagecoaches,
Freighting," "Surge of Life in the West."

CATHER, WILLA. _Death Comes for the Archbishop_, Knopf, New
York, 1927. Historical novel.

CONNELLEY, W. E. (editor). _Donithan's Expedition_, 1907. Saga
of the Mexican War. OP.

DAVIS, W. W. H. _El Gringo, or New Mexico and Her People_,
1856; reprinted by Rydal, Santa Fe, 1938. OP. Excellent on
manners and customs.

DUFFUS, R. L. _The Santa Fe Trail_, New York, 1930. OP.
Bibliography. Best book of this century on the subject.

DUNBAR, SEYMOUR. _History of Travel in America_, 1915; revised
edition issued by Tudor, New York, 1937.

GREGG, JOSIAH. _Commerce of the Prairies_, two vols., 1844.
Reprinted, but all OP. Gregg wrote as a man of experience and
not as a professional writer. He wrote not only the classic of
the Santa Fe trade and trail but one of the classics of
bedrock Americana. It is a commentary on civilization in the
Southwest that his work is not kept in print. Harvey
Fergusson, in _Rio Grande_, has written a penetrating
criticism of the man and his subject. In 1941 and 1944 the
University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, issued two volumes of
the _Diary and Letters of Josiah Gregg_, edited by Maurice G.
Fulton with Introductions by Paul Horgan. These volumes,
interesting in themselves, are a valuable complement to
Gregg's major work.

INMAN, HENRY. _The Old Santa Fe Trail_, 1897. A mine of lore.

LAUGHLIN, RUTH (formerly Ruth Laughlin Barker). _Caballeros_,
New York, 1931; republished by Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1946.
Essayical goings into the life of things. Especially
delightful on burros. A book to be starred. _The Wind Leaves
No Shadow_, New York, 1948; Caxton, 1951. A novel around
Dona Tules Barcelo, the powerful, beautiful, and
silvered mistress of Santa Fe's gambling _sala_ in the 1830's
and '40's.

MAGOFFIN, SUSAN SHELBY. _Down the Santa Fe Trail_, Yale
University Press, New Haven, 1926. Delectable diary.

PILLSBURY, DOROTHY L. _No High Adobe_, University of New
Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1950. Sketches, pleasant to read,
that make the _gente_ very real.

RUXTON, GEORGE FREDERICK. _Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky
Mountains_, London, 1847. In 1924 the second half of this book
was reprinted under title of _Wild Life in the Rocky
Mountains_. In 1950, with additional Ruxton writings
discovered by Clyde and Mae Reed Porter, the book, edited by
LeRoy R. Hafen, was reissued under title of _Ruxton of the
Rockies_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Santa Fe is
only one incident in it. Ruxton illuminates whatever he
touches. He was in love with the wilderness and had a fire in
his belly. Other writers add details, but Ruxton and Gregg
embodied the whole Santa Fe world.

VESTAL, STANLEY. _The Old Santa Fe Trail_, Houghton Mifflin,
Boston, 1939.

_18_

Stagecoaches, Freighting

A GOOD INTRODUCTION to a treatment of the stagecoach of the
West would be Thomas De Quincey's "The English Mail-Coach."
The proper place to read about the coaches would be in Doctor
Lyon's Pony Express Museum, out from Pasadena, California. May
it never perish! Old Monte drives up now and then in Alfred
Henry Lewis' _Wolfville_ tales, and Bret Harte made Yuba Bill
crack the Whip; but, somehow, considering all the excellent
expositions and reminiscing of stage-coaching in western
America, the proud, insolent, glorious figure of the driver
has not been adequately pictured.

Literature on "Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Trail" is pertinent.
See also under "Pony Express."

BANNING, WILLIAM, and BANNING, GEORGE HUGH. _Six Horses_, New
York, 1930. A combination of history and autobiography. Routes
to and in California; much of Texas. Enjoyable reading.
Excellent on drivers, travelers, stations, "pass the mustard,
please." Bibliography. OP.

CONKLING, ROSCOE P. and MARGARET B. _The Butterfield Overland
Trail, 1857-1869_, Arthur H. Clark Co., Glendage, California.
Three volumes replete with facts from politics in Washington
over mail contracts to Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos River.

DOBBIE, J. FRANK. Chapter entitled "Pistols, Poker and the
Petit Mademoiselle in a Stagecoach," in _The Flavor of Texas_
1936. OP.

DUFFUS, R. L. _The Santa Fe Trail_ New York, 1930. Swift
reading. Well selected bibliography. OP.

FREDERICK, J. V. _Ben Holladay, the Stage Coach King_, Clark,
Glendale, California, 1940. Bibliography.

HALEY, J. EVETTS. Chapter v, "The Stage-Coach Mail," in _Fort
Concho and the Texas Frontier_, illustrated by Harold Bugbee,
San Angelo Standard-Times, San Angelo, Texas, 1952. Strong on
frontier crossed by stage line.

HUNGERFORD, EDWARD. _Wells Fargo: Advancing the Frontier_,
Random House, New York, 1949. Written without regard for the
human beings that the all-swallowing corporation crushed.
Facts on highwaymen.

INMAN, HENRY. _The Old Santa Fe Trail_, New York, 1897. OP.
_The Great Salt Lake Trail_, 1898. OP. Many first-hand
incidents and characters.

MAJORS, ALEXANDER. _Seventy Years on the Frontier_, Chicago,
1893. Reprinted by Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio.
Majors was the lead steer of all freighters.

ORMSBY, W. L. _The Butterfield Overland Mail_, edited by Lyle
H. Wright and Josephine M. Bynum, Huntington Library, San
Marino, California, 1942. Ormsby rode the stage from St. Louis
to San Francisco in 1858 and contributed to the New York
_Herald_ the lively articles now made into this book.

ROOT, FRANK A., and CONNELLEY, W. E. _The Overland Stage to
California_, Topeka, Kansas, 1901. Reprinted by Long's College
Book Co., Columbus, Ohio. A full storehouse. Basic.

SANTLEBEN, AUGUST. _A Texas Pioneer_, edited by I. D. Affleck,
New York, 1910. OP. Best treatise available on freighting on
Chihuahua Trail.

TWAIN, MARK. _Roughing It_, 1871. Mark Twain went west by
stage.

WINTHER, O. O. _Express and Stagecoach Days in California_,
Stanford University Press, 1926. Compact, with bibliography.
OP.

_19_

Pony Express

"PRESENTLY the driver exclaims, `Here he comes!'

"Every neck is stretched and every eye strained. Away across
the endless dead level of the prairie a black speck appears
against the sky. In a second or two it becomes a horse and
rider, rising and falling, rising and falling sweeping towards
us nearer and nearer--growing more and more distinct, more and
more sharply defined--nearer and still nearer, and the flutter
of the hoofs comes faintly to the ear--another instant a whoop
and a hurrah from our upper deck [of the stagecoach], a wave
of the rider's hand, but no reply, and man and horse burst
past our excited faces, and go swinging away like a belated
fragment of a storm."--Mark Twain, _Roughing It_.

A word cannot be defined in its own terms; nor can a region,
or a feature of that region. Analogy and perspective are
necessary for comprehension. The sense of horseback motion has
never been better realized than by Kipling in "The Ballad of
East and West." See "Horses."

BRADLEY, GLENN D._ The Story of the Pony Express_, Chicago,
1913. Nothing extra. OP.

BREWERTON, G. D. _Overland with Kit Carson_, New York, 1930.
Bibliography on West in general.

CHAPMAN, ARTHUR. _The Pony Express_, Putnam's, New York, 1932.
Good reading and bibliography.

DOBIE, J. FRANK. Chapter on "Rides and Riders," in _On the
Open Range_, published in 1931; reprinted by Banks Up
shaw, Dallas. Chapter on "Under the Saddle" in _The Mustangs_.

HAPEN, LEROY. _The Overland Mail_, Cleveland, 1926. Factual,
bibliography. OP.

ROOT, FRANK A., and CONNELLEY, W. E. _The Overland Stage to
California_, Topeka, Kansas, 1901. Reprinted by Long's College
Book Co., Columbus, Ohio. Basic work.

VISSCHER, FRANK J. _A Thrilling and Truthful History of the
Pony Express_, Chicago, 1908. OP. Not excessively "thrilling."

_20_

Surge of Life in the West

THE WANDERINGS of Cabeza de Vaca, Coronado, De Soto, and La
Salle had long been chronicled, although the chronicles had
not been popularized in English, when in 1804 Captain
Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark set out to explore
not only the Louisiana Territory, which had just been
purchased for the United States by President Thomas Jefferson,
but on west to the Pacific. Their _Journals_, published in
1814, initiated a series of chronicles comparable in scope,
vitality, and manhood adventure to the great collection known
as _Hakluyt's Voyages_.

Between 1904 and 1907 Reuben Gold Thwaites, one of the
outstanding editors of the English-speaking world, brought out
in thirty-two volumes his epic _Early Western Travels_. This
work includes the Lewis and Clark _Journals_, every student of
the West, whether Northwest or Southwest, goes to the
collection sooner or later. It is a commentary on the values
of life held by big rich boasters of patriotism in the West
that virtually all the chronicles in the collection remain out
of print.

An important addendum to the Thwaites collection of _Early
Western Travels_ is "The Southwest Historical Series," edited
by Ralph P. Bieber--twelve volumes, published 1931-43, by
Clark, Glendale, California.

The stampede to California that began in 1849 climaxed all
migration orgies of the world in its lust for gold; but the
lust for gold was merely one manifestation of a mighty
population's lust for life. Railroads raced each other to
cross the continent. Ten million Longhorns were going up the
trails;
from Texas while the last of a hundred million buffaloes,
killed in herds--the greatest slaughter in history--were being
skinned. Dodge City was the Cowboy Capital of the world,
and Chicago was becoming "hog butcher of the world."
Miller and Lux were expanding their ranges so that, as others
boasted, their herds could trail from Oregon to Baja
California and bed down every night on Miller and Lux's own
grass.

Hubert Howe Bancroft (1832-1918) was massing in San
Francisco at his own expense the greatest assemblage of
historical documents any one individual ever assembled. While
his interviewers and note-takers sorted down tons of
manuscript, he was employing a corps of historians to write
what,
at first designed as a history of the Pacific states, grew in
twenty-eight volumes to embrace also Alaska, British Columbia,
Texas, Mexico, and Central America, aside from five
volumes on the Native Races and six volumes of essays.
Meantime he was printing these volumes in sets of thousands
and
selling them through an army of agents that covered America.

Collis P. Huntington (1821-1900) was building the
Southern Pacific Railroad into a network, interlocked with
other systems and steamship lines, not only enveloping
California land but also the whole economic and political life
of
that and other states, with headquarters in the U.S. Congress.
Then his nephew, Henry E. Huntington (1850-1927), taking over
his wealth and power, was building gardens at San Marino,
California, collecting art, books, and manuscripts to
make, without benefit of any institution of learning and in
defiance of all the slow processes of tradition found at
Oxford and Harvard, a Huntington Library and a Huntington Art
Gallery that, set down amid the most costly botanical
profusion imaginable, now rival the world's finest.

The dreams were of empire. Old men and young toiled as
"terribly" as mighty Raleigh. The "spacious times" of Queen
Elizabeth seemed, indeed, to be translated to another sphere,
though here the elements that went into the mixture were
less diverse. Boom methods of Gargantuan scale were applied
to cultural factors as well as to the physical. Few men
stopped to reflect that while objects of art may be bought by
the wholesale, the development of genuine culture is too
intimately personal and too chemically blended with the
spiritual to be bartered for. The Huntingtons paid a quarter
of a million dollars for Gainsborough's "The Blue Boy." It is
very beautiful. Meanwhile the mustang grapevine waits for some
artist to paint the strong and lovely grace of its drapery and
thereby to enrich for land-dwellers every valley where it
hangs over elm or oak.

Most of the books in this section could be placed in other
sections. Many have been. They represent the vigor, vitality,
energy, and daring characteristic of our frontiers. To quote
Harvey Fergusson's phrase, the adventures of mettle have
always had "a tension that would not let them rest."

BARKER, EUGENE C. _The Life of Stephen F. Austin_, Dallas,
1925. Republished by Texas State Historical Association,
Austin. Iron-wrought biography of the leader in making Texas
Anglo-American.

BELL, HORACE. _Reminiscences of a Ranger, or Early Times in
California_, Los Angeles, 1881; reprinted, but OP. In this
book and in _On the Old West Coast_, Bell caught the lift and
spiritedness of life-hungry men.

BIDWELL, JOHN (1819-1900). _Echoes of the Past_, Chico,
California (about 1900). Bidwell got to California several
years before gold was discovered. He became foremost citizen
and entertained scientists, writers, scholars, and artists at
his ranch home. His brief accounts of the trip across the
plains and of pioneer society in California are graphic,
charming, telling. The book goes in and out of print but is
not likely to die.

BILLINGTON, RAY ALLEN. _Westward Expansion: A History of the
American Frontier_, Macmillan, New York, 1949. This Alpha to
Omega treatise concludes with a seventy-five-page, double-
column, fine-print bibliography which not only
lists but comments upon most books and articles of any
consequence that have been published on frontier history.

BOURKE, JOHN G. _On the Border with Crook_, New York, 1891.
Now published by Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio.
Bourke had an eager, disciplined mind, at once scientific and
humanistic; he had imagination and loyalty to truth and
justice; he had a strong body and joyed in frontier exploring.
He was a captain in the army but had nothing of the littleness
of the army mind exhibited by Generals Nelson Miles and O. O.
Howard in their egocentric reminiscences. I rank his book as
the meatiest and richest of all books dealing with campaigns
against Indians. In its amplitude it includes the whole
frontier. General George Crook was a wise, generous, and noble
man, but his _Autobiography_ (edited by Martin F. Schmitt;
University of Oklahoma Press) lacks that power in writing
necessary to turn the best subject on earth into a good book
and capable also, as Darwin demonstrated, of turning
earthworms into a classic.

BURNHAM, FREDERICK RUSSELL. _Scouting on Two Continents_, New
York, 1926; reprinted, Los Angeles, 1942. A brave book of
enthralling interest. The technique of scouting in the Apache
Country is illuminated by that of South Africa in the Boer
War. Hunting for life, Major Burnham carried it with him. OP.

DEVOTO, BERNARD. _The Year of Decision 1846_, Houghton
Mifflin, Boston, 1943. Critical interpretation as well as
depiction. The Mexican War, New Mexico, California, Mountain
Men, etc. DeVoto's _Across the Wide Missouri_ is wider in
spirit, less bound to political complexities. See under
"Mountain Men."

EMORY, LIEUTENANT COLONEL WILLIAM H. _Notes of a Military
Reconnaissance from Fort Leavenworth, in Missouri, to San
Diego, in California, including Part of the Arkansas, Del
Norte, and Gila Rivers_, Washington, 1848. Emory's own vivid
report is only one item in _Executive Document No. 41_, 30th
Congress, 1st Session, with which it is bound. Lieutenant J.
W. Albert's _Journal_ and additional
_Report on New Mexico_, St. George Cooke's Odyssey of his
march from Santa Fe to San Diego, another _Journal_ by Captain
A. R. Johnson, the Torrey-Englemann report on botany,
illustrated with engravings, all go to make this one of the
meatiest of a number of meaty government publications. The
Emory part of it has been reprinted by the University of New
Mexico Press, under title of _Lieutenant Emory Reports_,
Introduction and Notes by Ross Calvin, Albuquerque, 1951.

Emory's great two-volume _Report on United States and Mexican
Boundary Survey_, Washington 1857 and 1859, is, aside from
descriptions of borderlands and their inhabitants, a veritable
encyclopedia, wonderfully illustrated, on western flora and
fauna. United States Commissioner on this Boundary Survey
(following the Mexican War) was John Russell Bartlett. While
exploring from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific and far down
into Mexico, he wrote _Personal Narrative of Explorations and
Incidents in Texas, New Mexico, California, Sonora and
Chihuahua_. published in two volumes, New York, 1854. For me
very little rewritten history has the freshness and
fascination of these strong, firsthand personal narratives,
though I recognize many of them as being the stuff of
literature rather than literature itself.

FOWLER, JACOB. _The Journal of Jacob Fowler, 1821-1822_,
edited by Elliott Coues, New York, 1898. Hardly another
chronicle of the West is so Defoe-like in homemade realism,
whether on Indians and Indian horses or Negro Paul's
experience with the Mexican "Lady" at San Fernando de Taos.
Should be reprinted.

GAMBRELL, HERBERT. _Anson Jones: The Last President of Texas_,
Garden City, New York, 1948; now distributed by Southern
Methodist University Press, Dallas, Texas. Anson Jones was
more surged over than surgent. Infused with a larger
comprehension than that behind many a world figure, this
biography of a provincial figure is perhaps the most artfully
written that Texas has produced. It goes into the soul of the
man.

HOBBS, JAMES. _Wild Life in the Far West_, Hartford,
1872. Hobbs saw just about all the elephants and heard just
about all the owls to be seen and heard in the Far West
including western Mexico. Should be reprinted.

HULBERT, ARCHER BUTLER. _Forty-Niners: The Chronicle of the
California Trail_, Little, Brown, Boston, 1931. Hulbert read
exhaustively in the exhausting literature by and about the
gold hunters rushing to California. Then he wove into a
synthetic diary the most interesting and illuminating records
on happenings, characters, ambitions, talk, singing, the whole
life of the emigrants.

IRVING, WASHINGTON. Irving made his ride into what is now
Oklahoma in 1832. He had recently returned from a seventeen-
year stay in Europe and was a mature literary man--as mature
as a conforming romanticist could become Prairie life
refreshed him. A _Tour on the Prairies_, published in 1835,
remains refreshing. It is illuminated by _Washington Irving on
the Prairie; or, A Narrative of the Southwest in the Year
1832_, by Henry Leavitt Ellsworth (who accompanied Irving),
edited by Stanley T. Williams and Barbara D. Simison, New
York, 1937; by _The Western Journals of Washington Irving_,
excellently edited by John Francis McDermott, Norman,
Oklahoma, 1944; and by Charles J. Latrobe's _The Rambler in
North America, 1832-1833_, New York, 1835.

JAMES, MARQUIS. _The Raven_, Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis,
1929. Graphic life of Sam Houston.

KURZ, RUDOLPH FRIEDERICH. _Journal of Rudolph Friederich Kurz:
. . . His Experiences among Fur Traders and American Indians
on the Mississippi and Upper Missouri Rivers, during the Years
of 1846-1852_, U.S. Bureau of Ethnology Bulletin 115,
Washington, 1937. The public has not had a chance at this
book, which was printed rather than published. Kurz both saw
and recorded with remarkable vitality. He was an artist and
the volume contains many reproductions of his paintings and
drawings. One of the most readable and illuminating of western
journals.

LEWIS, OSCAR. _The Big Four_, New York, 1938. Railroad
magnates.

LOCKWOOD, FRANK C. _Arizona Characters_, Los Angeles,
California, 1928. Fresh sketches of representative men. The
book deserves to be better known than it is. OP.

LYMAN, GEORGE D. _John Marsh Pioneer_, New York, 1930. Prime
biography and prime romance. Laid mostly in California. This
book almost heads the list of all biographies of western men.
OP.

PARKMAN, FRANCIS. _The Oregon Trail_, 1849. Parkman knew how
to write but some other penetrators of the West put down about
as much. School assignments have made his book a recognized
classic.

PATTIE, JAMES O. _Personal Narrative_, Cincinnati, 1831;
reprinted, but OP. Positively gripping chronicle of life in
New Mexico and the Californias during Mexican days.

PIKE, ZEBULON M. _The Southwestern Expedition of Zebulon M.
Pike_, Philadelphia, 1810. The 1895 edition edited by Elliott
Coues is the most useful to students. No edition is in print.
Pike's explorations of the Southwest (1806-7) began while the
great Lewis and Clark expedition (1804-6) was ending. His
journal is nothing like so informative as theirs but is just
as readable. _The Lost Pathfinder_ is a biography of Pike by
W. Eugene Hollon, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1949.

TWAIN, MARK. _Roughing It_, 1872. Mark Twain was a man who
wrote and not merely a writer in man-form. He was frontier
American in all his fibers. He was drunk with western life at
a time when both he and it were standing on tiptoe watching
the sun rise over the misty mountain tops, and he wrote of
what he had seen and lived before he became too sober.
_Roughing It_ comes nearer catching the energy, the
youthfulness, the blooming optimism, the recklessness, the
lust for the illimitable in western life than any other book.
It deals largely with mining life, but the surging vitality of
this life as reflected by Mark Twain has been the chief common
denominator of all American frontiers and was as
characteristic of Texas "cattle kings" when grass was free as
of Virginia City "nabobs" in bonanza.

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