A Pathfinder in the Southwest: The Itinerary of Lieutenant A.W. Whipple During His Explorations for a Railway Route from Fort Smith to Los Angeles in the Years, 1853-1854 (American Exploration and Travel)

Yesterday's Muse Verified independent store

→

xv, 298 pp. "Whipple's "itinerary" remains one of the most interesting, authoritative, and human journals on the Southwest, as it was before settlement. With the enthusiasm of a yo ung man realizing his responsibility, he let nothing escape his observation. He describes the Indians and frontiersmen whom he met (many of them famous in the history of the West); the now famous ruins which he and his colleagues discovered; the Mexican settlements they visited; and with great clarity the wild, untrammeled beauty of an area intruded by plow or white man. The advent of the Civil War, which was to promote Whipple to the rank of Major General and caused his death, delayed the building of the railroad which he envisioned, yet today major portions of this survey are used as main lines toward the west." Show more