A Journey Through Texas: Or a Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier

2020 Reprint of the 1857 Edition. This edition edited by James Howard and illustrated by Mary Sloan. Early in the year 1854 the author, a young New England journalist, crossed the Louisiana border and set off on horseback into the teeth of the Texas winter. this work recounts his travel along the Old San Antonio Road through the East Texas' piney woods, the dry prairies farther west, the chaparral of South Texas, the coastal prairies, and the rich bottomlands around Houston and Galveston. This is now considered a classic account of the territory Olmsted traversed. Epecially important are his commentaries and observations on slave conditions and cultures he encountered and documented.

Review

"One of the 50 best books of all time on the American West."--True West

"Olmstead's appeal was attributable to his readable and unvarnished reportage of places and events to which few Easterners had direct access. . . . [It] provides a credible glimpse of life in Texas in the mid-1850s, as well as insights into the contemporary debate over the institution of slavery. . . . The late A.C. Green found Olmstead's account sufficiently engaging to include it in his original 50 Best Books on Texas in 1982, and it remains a basic source for historians of the region and the period."--Southwest Book Views

"The peculiar institution was more peculiar in Texas than in other states, and Olmsted's eye for the weirdness makes Journey a page turner. So does his use of sprightly travelogue to make the serious argument that slavery was ruining Texas. . . . Olmsted's word portraits of mid-19th-century Texas are as good as the best modern travelogues."--Debbie Nathan, Texas Observer