mforts of riding in the emigrant trains were;
crowded together in badly lighted, badly ventilated cars, with stiff
wooden benches on either side, which were most uncomfortable to sit on
and next to impossible to lie down upon. Meals were taken as best they
might when they stopped at way stations while some bought milk and eggs
and made a shift to cook themselves a meal or brew a cup of tea on the
stove at the end of the car.

Over a week of this sort of slow travelling through the heat of the
plains was enough to tax the strength and courage of the most robust
man, let alone one in as delicate health as Stevenson at that time, and
it is a wonder he ever lived through it. Indeed, he was ill but kept
cheerful in spite of all, and was interested in the country and the
sights along the way. His own discomforts seemed to dwindle when he
contrasted them with those the pioneers endured travelling that same
direction twenty years before; crawling along in ox-carts with their
cattle and family possessions; suffering hunger, thirst, and infinite
weariness, and living in daily terror of attack from the Indians.

He made note of all he saw and the doings of his fellow emigrants, to be
used later on. Letters to Henley and Colvin en route are interesting.

"In the Emigrant Train from New York to San Francisco, Aug., 1879.

DEAR COLVIN,--I am in the cars between Pittsburg and Chicago, just now
bowling through Ohio. I am taking charge of a kid, whose mother is
asleep, with one eye while I write you this with the other. I reached
N.Y. Sunday night, and by five o'clock Monday was underway for the
West.--It is now about ten on Wednesday morning, so I have already been
forty hours in the cars. It is impossible to lie down in them, which
must end by being very wearying....

"No man is any use until he has dared everything; I feel just now as if
I had, and so might become a man. 'If ye have faith like a grain of
mustard seed.' That is so true! Just now I have faith as big as a cigar
case, I will not say die, and I do not fear man nor fortune.--R.L.S."

"Crossing Nebraska, Saturday, Aug. 23, 1879.

"My Dear Henley,--I am sitting on the top of the cars with a mill party
from Missouri going west for his health. Desolate flat prairie upon all
hands.... When we stop, which we do often, for emigrants and freight
travel together, the kine first, the man after, the whole plain is heard
singing with cicadae. This is a pause, as you may see