If at times he had been uncomfortable on the steamer he was ten times more so on the train.  It is hard to realize in these days of easy travelling what the discomforts of riding in the emigrant trains were; crowded together in badly lighted, badly ventilated cars, with stiff wooden benches on either side, which were most uncomfortable to sit on and next to impossible to lie down upon.  Meals were taken as best they might when they stopped at way stations while some bought milk and eggs and made a shift to cook themselves a meal or brew a cup of tea on the stove at the end of the car.

Over a week of this sort of slow travelling through the heat of the plains was enough to tax the strength and courage of the most robust man, let alone one in as delicate health as Stevenson at that time, and it is a wonder he ever lived through it.  Indeed, he was ill but kept cheerful in spite of all, and was interested in the country and the sights along the way.  His own discomforts seemed to dwindle when he contrasted them with those the pioneers endured travelling that same direction twenty years before; crawling along in ox-carts with their cattle and family possessions; suffering hunger, thirst, and infinite weariness, and living in daily terror of attack from the Indians.

He made note of all he saw and the doings of his fellow emigrants, to be used later on.  Letters to Henley and Colvin en route are interesting.

“In the Emigrant Train from New York to San Francisco, Aug., 1879.

DEAR COLVIN,—­I am in the cars between Pittsburg and Chicago, just now bowling through Ohio.  I am taking charge of a kid, whose mother is asleep, with one eye while I write you this with the other.  I reached N.Y.  Sunday night, and by five o’clock Monday was underway for the West.—­It is now about ten on Wednesday morning, so I have already been forty hours in the cars.  It is impossible to lie down in them, which must end by being very wearying....

“No man is any use until he has dared everything; I feel just now as if I had, and so might become a man.  ’If ye have faith like a grain of mustard seed.’  That is so true!  Just now I have faith as big as a cigar case, I will not say die, and I do not fear man nor fortune.—­R.L.S.”

“Crossing Nebraska, Saturday, Aug. 23, 1879.

“My Dear Henley,—­I am sitting on the top of the cars with a mill party from Missouri going west for his health.  Desolate flat prairie upon all hands....  When we stop, which we do often, for emigrants and freight travel together, the kine first, the man after, the whole plain is heard singing with cicadae.  This is a pause, as you may see from the writing.  What happened to the old pedestrian emigrants; what was the tedium suffered by the Indians and trappers of our youth, the imagination trembles to conceive.  This is now Saturday, 23rd, and I have been steadily travelling since I parted from you at St. Pancras.  It is a strange vicissitude