Before leaving New York, it had been a favourite scheme of Artemus Ward not to return from California to the East by way of Panama, but to come home across the Plains, and to visit Salt Lake City by the way. The difficulty that now presented itself was, that winter was close upon us, and that it was no pleasant thing to cross the Sierra Nevada and scale the Rocky Mountains with the thermometer far below freezingpoint. Nor was poor Artemus even at that time a strong man. My advice was to return to Panama, visit the West India Islands, and come back to California in the spring, lecture again in San Francisco, and then go on to the land of the Mormons. Artemus doubted the feasibility of this plan, and the decision was ultimately arrived at to try the journey to Salt Lake. Unfortunately the winter turned out to be one of the severest. When we arrived at Salt Lake City, my poor friend was seized with typhoid fever, resulting from the fatigue we had undergone, the intense cold to which we had been subjected, and the excitement of being on a journey of 3500 miles across the North American Continent, when the Pacific Railway had made little progress and the Indians were reported not to be very friendly. The story of the trip is told in Artemus Ward's lecture. I have added to it, at the special request of the publisher, a few explanatory notes, the purport of which is to render the reader acquainted with the characteristics of the lecturer's delivery. For the benefit of those who never had an opportunity of seeing Artemus Ward nor of hearing him lecture, I may be pardoned for attempting to describe the man himself.