A Summer Journey in the West

A trip out "west" in 1840 often meant going only as far as the Mississippi. As Mrs. Steele writes:

"I am glad I have looked upon the Mississippi. To read of it and to see it are two different things."

It was almost like a trip to the moon and you could not have asked for a better guide to write a book about it than Mrs. Steele. She was fascinated by everything she saw and wrote about it all in letters to "E."

Whether the price of steamboat passage, the geology of the land she was passing, the ...