Cornelia Wadsworth Adair's ancestors had pioneered in western New
York, where they opened and developed large, palatial estates; and
the life they lived was elegant and aristocratic. Adair too was
discreetly cultured; yet she took great personal pleasure in the
rough and primitive land of her famed JA Ranch in north Texas.
Because of physical discomfort and noisy passengers, she detested
traveling by railroad coach; yet she could ride all day on
horseback and lie down to sleep on a makeshift cot by a waterhole
or on an Indian's flea-infested buffalo rug. She was a lady of
interesting contradictions. This little Diary is her lively account
of a two-month trip which she and her husband made into the western
part of the United States in 1874. The ostensible purpose of the
trip was to hunt buffalo; however, these large beasts actually play
a very small part in the journal. Rather, the book is an
interesting and often amusing account, by an observant woman, of
the long journey from her husband's estate in Ireland to New York,
to Chicago and on into upper Michigan, across Lake Superior to
Minnesota, down the Mississippi for several days, out to the
buffalo-hunting grounds in Nebraska, then to Denver and the wonders
of the Rocky Mountains, and finally back to New York and the
Europe-bound ship. Adair writes with an easy fluency; and her eye
for picturesque detail, her taste for amusing incongruities, her
romanticist's delight in Nature, and her instinct for a "good tale"
combine to make her Diary pleasant and entertaining reading, while
her powers of keen observation provide valuable insight into life
as it was then in the West. First printed for private circulation
in 1918, the original book is now a rare collector's item of
Western Americana. Mrs. Adair said that she was allowing its
publication for two reasons. First, she was afraid that her
grandchildren and young friends would remember her only as "an old
lady who sat in an armchair, and whose stick had to be looked for";
she wanted them to know that she had once been "a very lively
person . . . [who] did all sorts of exciting things." Second, she
felt it worthwhile to record her experiences because "the world is
changing so quickly, ways of travelling especially so . . . and I
think it may be interesting to compare what was done in 1874 with
what will be done by the time the children are able to travel. No
doubt they will do their journeys by air, and do many, many things
that I have not been able to do; but they can never see the
prairies of America in their wild uncivilised state, or hunt
buffalo over them, nor can they pow-wow with the Red Indians in a
camp on the Platte River. So every time has its own special joys,
and the great thing is to miss as little as possible, and to share
as much."
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