"In 1853, with money in his pocket and elegant clothes in his saddle-bags, a twenty-four-year-old New Englander of aristocratic Yankee stock toured the territories of California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. The Canoe and the Saddle recounts Theodore Winthrop's Northwest tour. A novelized memoir of his travels, it became a bestseller when it was published shortly after the author's untimely death in the Civil War. This critical edition of Winthrop's work, the first in over half a century, offers readers the original text with a narrative overview of the nature and culture of the Pacific Northwest and reflections on the ecological and racial turmoil that gripped the region at the time"--Jacket.