“MY DEAR COLVIN: 

“I have finished my story.  The handwriting is not good because of the ship’s misconduct; thirty-one pages in ten days at sea is not bad.  I am not very well; bad food, bad air and hard work have brought me down.  But the spirits keep good.  The voyage has been most interesting and will make, if not a series of Pall Mall articles, at least the first part of a new book.  The last weight on me has been trying to keep notes for this purpose.  Indeed I have worked like a horse and am tired as a donkey.  If I should have to push on far by rail, I shall bring nothing but my fine bones to port.

“Goodbye to you all.  I suppose it is now late afternoon with you all across the seas.  What shall I find over here?  I dare not wonder.—­Ever yours R.L.S.”

As California was the goal he aimed for, in spite of his fatigue after ten days of poor living and the sea, he determined to push on immediately in an emigrant train bound for the Pacific coast.

On reaching port he and a man named Jones, with whom he had had more in common than with any of his other fellow passengers, landed together.

“Jones and I issued into West Street, sitting on some straw in the bottom of an open baggage wagon.  It rained miraculously, and from that moment till on the following night I left New York, there was scarce a lull, and no cessation of the downpour....

“It took but a few moments, though it cost a good deal of money, to be rattled along West Street to our destination:  Reunion House, No. 10 West Street, ‘kept by one Mitchell.’

“Here I was at last in America and was soon out upon the New York streets, spying for things foreign....

“The following day I had a thousand and one things to do; only the day to do them in and a journey across the continent before me in the evening....  It rained with potent fury; every now and then I had to get under cover for a while in order, so to speak, to give my mackintosh a rest; for under this continued drenching it began to grow damp on the inside.  I went to banks, post-offices, railway offices, restaurants, publishers, book sellers and money changers.

“I was so wet when I got back to Mitchell’s toward evening, that I had simply to divest myself of my shoes, socks and trousers, and leave them behind for the benefit of New York City.  No fire could have dried them ere I had to start; and to pack them in their present condition was to spread ruin among my other possessions.  With a heavy heart I said farewell to them as they lay a pulp in the middle of a pool upon the floor of Mitchell’s kitchen.  I wonder if they are dry by now.”

That night he joined a party of emigrants bound for the West, the weight of his baggage much increased by the result of his day’s purchases—­Bancroft’s “History of the United States” in six fat volumes.  So in less than twenty-four hours after landing on one coast he was on his way to the other.