I would have this unpretentious book taken only for what it is the wayside notes of a happy vagabondizing. It was written in hurried moments by the coal-oil lamps of country hotels, the tallow dips of section-house or ranch, the smoky pine knots of the cowboy's or the hunter's cabin, the crackling fogon of a Mexican adobe, or the snapping greasewood of my lonely campfire upon the plains; and from that vagrant body and Spirit I have not tried to over-civilize it. A prim chronicle of such a trip would be no chronicle at all. Nor have I desired to make it either an atlas or an encyclo paedia of the country. Economic and geographic essays do not belong within its s00pe. It is merely a truthful record of some of the experiences and impressions of a walk across the continent — the diary of a man who got outside the fences of civil ization and was glad of it. It is the simple story of joy on legs.