In 1872, Isabella Bird, daughter of a clergyman, set off alone to the Antipodes and found she had embarked on a life of adventurous travel. In 1873, wearing Hawaiian riding dress, she rode her horse through the American Wild West, a terrain only newly opened to pioneer settlement. The letters that make up this volume were first published in 1879. They tell of magnificent, unspoiled landscapes and abundant wildlife, of encounters with rattlesnakes,...

A woman ahead of her time, Isabella Bird (1831-1904) ranks among the most adventurous travel writers of her era. In this captivating travelogue, she reports to her sister back home in England on a series of journeys through nineteenth-century Canada and the United States. Bird recounts with passion and sensitivity such sights as wigwams on Prince Edward Island and Quebec's romantic falls of Lorette, in addition to dark encounters with cholera, slavery,...