Francis Parkman's importance as a travel writer has long rested on a single classic book, The Oregon Trail (1872), which was first published as The California and Oregon Trail (1849). It appeared at virtually the best possible time and under the best possible circumstance to ensure its immediate and continued success. Reflecting the interest in the exotic and the unknown which had been exploited by Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before The Mast (1842) and Herman Melville's Typee (1846), as well as by the volumes in John Murray's Home and Colonial Library and many other adventurous travel narratives, it describes the American West at a time when gold in California, settlement in Oregon, and the war with Mexico were on the nation's mind. Parkman had several advantages over the others who wrote, some perhaps better than he, at almost the same time about the area he traveled. He had been there, and...