Route Across the Rocky Mountains

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1932. 199pp. Octavo [22.5 cm] Burgundy cloth with the title gilt stamped on the front board and backstrip. Better than very good. Lacks the dust jacket. Volume in the 'Narratives of the Trans-Mississippi Frontier.' "In 1843 two Indiana young men could stand the Western fever no longer, and so left home with a small party, not, following the usual procedure, to select a farm two of three hundred miles away, but with the intention of pushing clear through to the Pacific Coast. California was still a Mexican province, Oregon was in dispute, with English subjects in possession; but these facts counted little at all with our Indiana explorers. Westward the tide of empire took its way! they were gone more than a year, and in that time saw strange lands, Indian tribes, the towering Rockies, vast herds of buffalo, droves of wild horses, fur traders, Mexicans dancing fandangos - and visions of an American commonwealth on the western shores of the continent." from the Preface.