"Every neck is stretched and every eye strained. Away across the endless dead level of the prairie a black speck appears against the sky. In a second or two it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling, rising and falling sweeping towards us nearer and nearer--growing more and more distinct, more and more sharply defined--nearer and still nearer, and the flutter of the hoofs comes faintly to the ear--another instant a whoop and a hurrah from our upper deck [of the stagecoach], a wave of the rider's hand, but no reply, and man and horse burst past our excited faces, and go swinging away like a belated fragment of a storm."--Mark Twain, _Roughing It_. A word cannot be defined in its own terms; nor can a region, or a feature of that region. Analogy and perspective are necessary for comprehension. The sense of horseback motion has never been better realized than by Kipling in "The Ballad of East and West." See "Horses." BRADLEY, GLENN D._ The Story of the Pony Express_, Chicago, 1913. Nothing extra. OP. BREWERTON, G. D. _Overland with Kit Carson_, New York, 1930. Bibliography on West in general. CHAPMAN, ARTHUR. _The Pony Express_, Putnam's, New York, 1932. Good reading and bibliography. DOBIE, J. FRANK. Chapter on "Rides and Riders," in _On the Open Range_, published in 1931; reprinted by Banks Up shaw, Dallas. Chapter on "Under the Saddle" in _The Mustangs_. HAPEN, LEROY. _The Overland Mail_, Cleveland, 1926. Factual, bibliography. OP. ROOT, FRANK A., and CONNELLEY, W. E. _The Overland Stage to California_, Topeka, Kansas, 1901. Reprinted by Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio. Basic work. VISSCHER, FRANK J. _A Thrilling and Truthful History of the Pony Express_, Chicago, 1908. OP. Not excessively "thrilling." 20. Surge of Life in the West THE WANDERINGS of Cabeza de Vaca, Coronado, De Soto, and La Salle had long been chronicled, although the chronicles had not been popularized in English, when in 1804 Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark set out to explore not only the Louisiana Territory, which had just been purchased for the United States by President Thomas Jefferson, but on west to the Pacific. Their _Journals_, published in 1814, initiated a series of chronicles comparable in scope, vitality, and manhood adventure to the great collection known as _Hakluyt's Voyages_. Between 1904 and 1907 Reuben Gold Thwaites, one of the outstanding editors of the English-speaking world, brought out in thirty-two volumes his epic _Early Western Travels_. This work includes the Lewis and Clark _Journals_, every student of the West, whether Northwest or Southwest, goes to the collection sooner or later. It is a commentary on the values of life held by big rich boasters of patriotism in the West that virtually all the chronicles in the collection remain out of print.