Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 8).djvu/17

Rh The book we here reprint is very rare. Published as an eleemosynary appeal to readers on behalf of its unfortunate author, who had become blind through his hardships, a small edition was put forth, and no copies are now known to be upon the market. Its reprint will, therefore, be a welcome addition to the journals of Western travellers.

Estwick Evans, whose Pedestrious Tour of Four Thousand Miles, through the Western States and Territories, comprises the second part of this volume, was, in his way, a philosopher—a man imbued with early nineteenth-century views of the return to nature and the charm of savage life. Slipping the leash of the restraints of civilization, and influenced by a strange mixture of Quixotism and stoicism, our author set forth from his New Hampshire home in the dead of an extreme winter, and crossed the frozen, almost trackless waste to the frontier post of Detroit. His copyright notice contains the following epitome of the journey: "The blast of the north is on the plain: the traveller shrinks in the midst of his journey."

Evans was born (1787) of good New England ancestry, at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Largely self-educated, he was admitted to the bar in 1811, and won popularity by espousing the cause of the oppressed, taking up cases for sailors, people in poor circumstances—those fleeced by self-seeking lawyers. A prominent colleague said of him: "Evans had about as much influence as any one, because he was a clever fellow, honest, poor, and not well treated, and the people sympathized with him." He volunteered for the War of 1812-15, but was rejected on account of a physical disability. After his adventurous Western journey, he married and settled in New Hampshire, at one time (1822-24) serving in the state legislature. His vein of Quixotism never left him; he desired to fight