To see New England--the home of my ancestors; to visit the Middle and Western States; to look upon the majestic Mississippi; to cross the Great Plains; to scale the mountains and to look through the Golden Gate upon the far-off Pacific were among the cherished desires through which my fancy wandered before leaving the Old Home and village school in Northern New York. The want of an education and the want of money were two serious obstacles which confronted me for a time. Without the former I could not prosecute my journeys intelligently and for want of the latter I could not even attempt them. Aspiring to an academic and collegiate course of study, but being at that period entirely without means for the accomplishment of my purpose, I left the district school of my native town and sought to raise the necessary funds by trapping for mink and other fur-bearing animals along the Oswegatchie and its tributary streams. This venture proving successful I entered the academy at Gouverneur in August, 1857, from which institution I was appointed to the State Normal College at Albany in the fall of 1859. I had been in Albany but six weeks when it became apparent that if I continued at the Normal I would soon be compelled to part with my last dollar for board and clothing. The years 1859-60 were spent alternately at Albany as student and in the village schools of Rensselaer County as teacher--the latter course being resorted to whenever money was needed with which to meet current expenses at the Normal School. Then came our great Civil Conflict overriding every other consideration. Books were thrown aside and the pursuits of the student and teacher supplanted by the sterner and more arduous duties of the soldier. During my three years of camping and campaigning with the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac I was enabled to gratify to some extent my desire for travel and to see much of interest as the shifting scenes of war led Bayard, Stoneman, Pleasonton, Gregg, Custer, Davies and Kilpatrick and their followers over the hills and through the valleys of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Being captured in a cavalry battle between Kilpatrick and Stuart in October, 1863, I was imprisoned successively at Richmond, Danville, Macon, Savannah, Charleston and Columbia, from which last prison I escaped in November, 1864; was recaptured and escaped a second and third time, traversing the States of South Carolina and Georgia in my long tramp from Columbia to Savannah. The marches, raids, battles, captures and escapes of those days seem to have increased rather than diminished my ardor for travel and adventure and hence it is possibly not strange that on leaving the army I still looked forward to more extended journeys in the East and exploratory tours beyond the Mississippi.