Life in the Far West. This item is unavailable.Life in the Far West

235 pp + ads, bound in origina black cloth. Spine is faded and has some old repairs, chip in cloth at rear joint, light scattered foxing. Contemporary ownership inscription on the front free endpaper: "Joseph L. Philbrook, North Hampton, N.H., Jan 19th 1850." Ruxton was the first traveler to write extensively of the mountain men of the Rockies. After having visited Veracruz, Mexico to observe the Mexican-American War in 1846, he traveled north to Santa Fe and then on to Bent's Fort in Colorado. From January through May 1847 he hunted along the front range of Colorado, visited with mountain men and endured an extremely cold winter. Wagner-Camp 173: 1: "This series of sketches first appearsed in Blackwood's Magazine numbers 63 and 64, June-November 1848.Of particular interest is an account of the Walker expedition of trappers to California, which Ruxon may have heard from Mark Head, probably one of the independent trappers accompanying Zenas Leonard." Howes R-552, Graff 3623.