Lt. Abert of the United States Army Topographical Engineers set out from Bent's Fort to conduct a detailed reconnaissance of the Canadian River region of the southern plains. Possessing a great eye for detail, Lt. Abert provided clear, graphic decriptions of birds, plants, animals, and the countryside, as well as details about the Comanches and the Kiowa. Lt. Abert's journal is one of the concluding records of the Anglo-American exploration of the American West begun in 1804 by Lewis and Clark.

Gold had just been discovered in California at the close of the Mexican War when Kit Carson started east from Los Angeles with dispatches. Going with him was Lieutenant George Douglas Brewerton, who describes their journey over the Old Spanish Trail. It was a torturous route across deserts and mountains requiring the kind of expert survival skills that made Kit Carson famous. The scout, who was carrying the news that would begin the rush for gold, went as far as Taos, where he was reunited with his wife. From there Brewerton joined a wagon train that labored over the Santa Fé Trail to Independence, Missouri. Overland with Kit Carson is a colorful and authentic account of encounters with Indians and white adventurers and of the hazards and hardships that accompanied anyone who undertook such a long journey in a sparsely populated country. “Of prime importance to many general readers as well as to historians will be Brewerton’s intimate and concrete pictures of Kit Carson.”—Southwest Review.