Another and still larger class, it is hoped, will find much of interest and value in the following pages. From every state in the Union, people are constantly passing westward. We found emigrant wagons on spots from which the Indians had just removed their wigwams. Multitudes more are now on the way, with the earnest purpose of founding homes and, if possible, of finding fortunes. In order to aid this class, as well as the sportsman, I have gathered in an appendix such additional information as may be useful to both.
The scientific details of our trip will probably be published in proper form and time, by the savans interested. In regard to these, my object has been simply to chronicle such matters as made an impression upon my own mind, being content with what cream might be gathered by an amateur's skimming, while the more bulky milk should be saved in capacious scientific buckets.
Professor Cope, the well known naturalist, of the Academy of Sciences, Philadelphia, received for examination and classification the most valuable fossils we obtained, and to him I am indebted for a large amount of most interesting and valuable scientific matter, which will be found embodied in chapters twenty-third and twenty-fourth.
The illustrations of men and brutes in this work are studies from life. Whenever it was possible, we had photographs taken.
The plains, it must be said, are a tract with which Romance has had much more to do than History. Red men, brave and chivalrous, and unnatural buffalo, with the habits of lions, exist only in imagination. In these pages, my earnest endeavor, when dealing with actualities, has been to "hold the mirror up to Nature," and to describe men, manners, and things as they are in real life upon the frontiers, and beyond, to-day.
THE OBJECT OF OUR EXPEDITION--A GLIMPSE OF ALASKA THROUGH CAPTAIN WALRUS' GLASS--WE ARE TEMPTED BY OUR RECENT PURCHASE--ALASKAN GAME OF "OLD SLEDGE"--THE EARLY STRUGGLES OF KANSAS--THE SMOKY HILL TRAIL--INDIAN HIGH ART--THE "BORDER-RUFFIAN," PAST AND PRESENT--TOPEKA--HOW IT RECEIVED ITS NAME--WAUKARUSA AND ITS LEGEND, 25-35
A CHAPTER OF INTRODUCTIONS--PROFESSOR PALEOZOIC--TAMMANY SACHEM--DOCTOR PYTHAGORAS--GENUINE MUGGS--COLON AND SEMI-COLON--SHAMUS DOBEEN--TENACIOUS GRIPE--BUGS AND PHILOSOPHY--HOW GRIPE BECAME A REPUBLICAN, 36-54