Having received my commission as an agent for the American Bible Society, and completed my preparations for entering upon my work as far as I could do so in New York, I left that city for one of the important cities of the Southwest, which was to be my headquarters. I knew at the outset that I could not reach the wild regions I was to explore by railroad, steamboat, stage, or even with my own private conveyance; I knew that I could climb hills and mountains, follow blind bridle-paths, ford rivers and swollen streams, only on horseback. I had several years before had some two years' experience in constant horseback travel in labors similar to those I was now entering upon, as superintendent of the colporteur operations of the American Tract Society in Virginia. There I had floundered in the marshes and swamps of "Tidewater," and been lost amid the rugged rocks and dense forests high up the sides and in the loftiest summits of the Blue Ridge and other mountains. I knew that I must have a horse. This was indispensable. More than that, I wanted a good horse, a horse broken expressly for the saddle. To be churned for years--bump, bump, bump--upon a hard-trotting horse, that was out of the question with me. I had but a small stock of health and physical strength at best, and none to spare in that way. My old friend Rev. Dr. Sprole, then of Washington, D.C., afterward of West Point, New York, and now of Detroit, Michigan, used to tell me, in Washington, that "Brother Leete," one of my co-workers in the circulation of the publications of the American Tract Society, "was one of the most self-denying Christians he had ever seen--in that he had patience to drive such a miserable old horse in transporting his books over the hills and mountains of Pennsylvania," where he had known him. But I was not anxious to illustrate that particular type of piety. I did not care to let my "light _so_ shine." I wanted not only a good saddle-horse, but a faithful, reliable animal. I wanted one that I could hitch to the limb of a tree, in the midst of scores or hundreds of other horses, and leave there without any concern, while I preached in a log meeting-house, or at a "stand" erected in a grove at some cross-roads, or at a camp-meeting, or wherever else I should be able to meet and address the people. I wanted a hardy horse, that could live on the coarsest food, and stand during the coldest nights in log stables that afforded but a little more protection from the wind and cold than a rail fence. I wanted an easy-going, fleet horse, that would take me, without great personal fatigue or needless waste of time, over a wide extent of country. I wanted a horse that would scare at nothing--that, as I had opportunity, I could lead up a plank or two, on board a noisy stern-wheel or other Western steamer, along the banks of the rivers, across wharf-boats, or wherever I might wish to embark for a hundred miles or more to save a few days of horseback travel.