Dangers of the Trail in 1865: A Narrative of Actual Events

Young, Charles E. (Charles Edward), 1846-Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.6

Word count: 131K words
Chapters: 14

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Dangers of the Trail in 1865: A Narrative of Actual Events by Charles E. YoungAuthor: Young, Charles E. (Charles Edward), 1846-,Language: English, Class: F590.3: United States local history: The West. Trans-Mississippi Region. Great Plains, Release Date: Oct 28, 2008

Editor's review

This is a first-person account of the hazards of traveling the American West in 1865. Its author, Charles E. Young, was born in 1846, and his roads, weather, relations with Indians, shortages of supplies, and accidents together form an unvarnished picture of western travel. Its value lies not in literary polish but in immediacy: through the eyes of an ordinary traveler, the reader sees the real rhythm of the plains west of the Mississippi—how camps were pitched, how horses were lost, how companions fell out. For today's reader it is both a firsthand sidelight on Western history and a sample of how the story of "westward expansion" was told by those who lived it. The prose is nineteenth-century English, with long sentences and unfamiliar place names and objects; reading with a map and background notes is advised. It suits use as a supplement to historical sources rather than as an introduction, and may be read alongside western diaries of the same period to appreciate the gap between private record and legendary narrative.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in the history of the American West who want firsthand private records
Students of literature and history studying nineteenth-century American travel writing and diary narrative
Adult readers who enjoy true adventure and can accept an old-fashioned English style
University history students who need English source material for supplementary class reading

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting a tightly plotted, dramatic adventure novel
Beginners whose English is not yet fluent and who are easily troubled by unfamiliar names and places
Readers who want a systematic overview of Western history rather than scattered observations

Reading tips

Read a short background piece on the American West in the 1860s before starting, to reduce unfamiliarity.
Keep a map of the American Midwest at hand and mark the route and place names as you read.
After each chapter, note in two or three sentences the specific difficulties the author faced and how he dealt with them.
Read alongside western diaries or travel accounts of the same period to compare what different eyewitnesses noticed.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book a novel or a true experience?

Judging by the subtitle "A Narrative of Actual Events" and the author's biographical information, it is a factual narrative based on the author's own experience, not a work of fiction. The details reflect personal memory and the perspective of the time, so it is best read as an eyewitness record rather than as a conclusion established by historical scholarship.

Is the original English hard to read?

The original is nineteenth-century English, with long sentences and many place names, objects, and idioms of the period, which can be daunting at first for modern readers. Learn the basic historical background first, look up unfamiliar place names as you go, and do not get stuck on every word; follow the main line of the journey and the author's situation.

Where does the electronic edition come from, and is it reliable?

The book was released by Project Gutenberg as part of its free public-domain ebook collection. The text has been basically proofread, but it is a public-domain edition without modern scholarly notes. If you intend to cite it in research, check the original edition information and consult relevant historical scholarship.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Young, Charles E. (Charles Edward), 1846- Author · 1846

Charles E. Young (full name Charles Edward Young, born 1846) was an English-language author of factual narratives about whom little biographical information survives; public records are limited, and his early life and professional background can no longer be established with certainty. Only one work can be confirmed, Dangers of the Trail in 1865: A Narrative of Actual Events. As the title and subtitle indicate, the book deals with the hazards of the western trails in 1865 and belongs to the firsthand, eyewitness style of factual narrative rather than fiction. Such works typically record actual experiences on the road from a first-person or witness perspective, in plain, direct language that values the credibility of events over literary embellishment. On the available evidence, Young's significance lies mainly in preserving a firsthand account of mid-nineteenth-century American western travel and migration, useful to readers interested in trail conditions, travel risks, and everyday life of the period.