"... and before us was a dark sea-wall of mountains..." With those words, Caroline Leighton ended a journey from the civilized eastern states and began recording her responses to fifteen years on the Pacific coast. Born and educated in New England, she worked in a school for former slaves in Washington DC during the Civil War. There she met her future husband, Rufus Leighton. After the war they married and sailed for the Pacific Northwest where Rufus had an appointment as a customs official. They endured shipwreck, stormy seas, and travel by canoe during spring floods. Caroline's eye is both humorous and humane as she examines the West and all the people she meets there: miners, farmers, Chinese workers, Native Americans, and immigrants from many countries. She accompanied her husband as he traveled across the Territory, journeying by wagon to Walla Walla, taking steamers on the upper Columbia where the boat had to be winched up through canyons, and traveling by lumber ships between Washington and San Francisco. On one such journey she writes:

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