John Muir, Earth-planet, Universe. These words are written on the inside cover of the notebook from which the contents of this volume have been taken. They reflect the mood in which the late author and explorer undertook his thousand-mile walk to the Gulf of Mexico a half-century ago. No less does this refreshingly cosmopolitan address, which might have startled any finder of the book, reveal the temper and the comprehensiveness of Mr. Muir s mind. He never was and never could be a parochial student of nature. Even at the early age of twenty-nine his eager interest in every aspect of the natural world had made him a citizen of the universe. 

In 1887 George Nellis became the third person to ride across the United States, from Herkimer, New York to San Francisco, shaving several weeks off Thomas Stevens’ time, thus becoming the first to “race across the United States.” Throughout this account, Hayes reports on the state of bicycle touring in the late nineteenth century.