“An Old Sketch-Book” and “The Old Journey,” the predecessors of “The Pioneer Trail,” are now out of print, and the volume here offered to the public in their stead is to fill a demand for the original works. In the present book there is much additional matter to the letterpress of the first editions and, indeed, the character of the work is somewhat changed, the work being more an epitome of human emotion rather than one descriptive of scenery. These statements, however, have rather too important a sound as applied to such a short narrative as makes up these pages. Since the issue of “The Old Journey,” the sketches from which it was illustrated have been scattered here and there, and the vignettes from the original plates are given in their place. An explanation seems necessary to those who may purchase the book in its new form in anticipation of its being a duplicate of the former works.

I lie at the side of a mountain road. The mountain is steep, the road is edged with trees. There are the wild-cherry, evergreens, and clumps of ancient shrub-oak. The road is now unused; few pass over it, save it be the shepherds who take their flocks from the high pastures of one mountain range to those of another. What once had been ruts made by the wheels of wagons are now changed by rain and flood into deep-cut gullies. It is a place where, in the spring time, the air is fragrant from millions of snow-white blossoms, and where now on the branches of the cherry, hang clusters of crimson fruit. The piece of road is historic. At this, its steepest part, near “The Summit,” and where it is crossed by ledges of stone and littered with boulders and shale that once tore the iron from the cattle’s feet, I found an ox-shoe. The relic had lain here long. Down this road passed the Pioneers.

There is stillness around. Over “The Little Mountain” arches a cloudless sky, the wide landscape is bathed in sunlight. But this place, now so quiet and deserted, may yet become the scene of animation. The broken road is to be a highway, preserved as a piece of “The Pioneer Trail.”

THE AUTHOR.