Send this Mississippi pilot, printer, adventurer, miner in rough camps of the Sierras, to Paris, Italy, Constantinople, and the Holy Land, and what will be his impressions? For an answer we must read _The Innocents Abroad_. It will be no _Outre Mer_, we are certain of that, and no _Pencillings by the Way_. Before a line of it was written an atmosphere had been created unique in American literature, for where, save in the California of 1867, was there ever optimism, nay, romanticism, that could reply instantly to the young reporter who asked to be sent on a Don Quixote pilgrimage to Europe and the Orient, "Go. Twelve hundred and fifty dollars will be paid for you before the vessel sails, and your only instructions are that you will continue to write at such times and from such places as you deem proper, and in the same style that heretofore secured you the favor of the readers of the _Alta California_"? It was not to be a tour of Europe, as Longfellow and Willis and Taylor had made it, the pilgrimage of a devotee to holy shrines; it was to be a great picnic with sixty-seven in the picnic party. Moreover, the recorder of it was bound by his instructions to report it in the style that had won him California fame. It was to be a Western book, written by a Westerner from the Western standpoint, but this does not imply that his Western readers expected an illiterate production full of coarseness and rude wit. California had produced a school of poets and romancers; she had serious literary journals, and she was proud of them. The letters, if California was to set her stamp of approval upon them, must have literary charm; they must have, moreover, freshness and originality; and they must sparkle with that spirit of humor which already had begun to be recognized as a native product. We open the book and linger a moment over the preface: Notwithstanding it is only the record of a picnic, it has a purpose, which is, to suggest to the reader how _he_ would be likely to see Europe and the East if he looked at them with his own eyes instead of the eyes of those who traveled in those countries before him. I make small pretence of showing any one how he _ought_ to look at objects of interest beyond the sea--other books do that, and therefore, even if I were competent to do it, there is no need. I offer no apologies for any departures from the usual style of travel-writing that may be charged against me--for I think I have seen with impartial eyes, and I am sure I have written at least honestly, whether wisely or not.