Roughing It

Mark Twain, whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, published Roughing It in 1872. It is his account of the seven years he spent in the Far West, and it is written as travel and memoir rather than as fiction.

He left Missouri in 1861 to travel with his brother, who had just been appointed secretary of the Nevada Territory. Once out there he caught gold fever and went off to the Humboldt mines, and when prospecting lost its attraction he found work as a reporter in Virginia City. In 1864 he moved on to California and a reporting job in San Francisco, and it was from there that his reputation as a humorist began to spread.

The book follows the shape of those years. Its first twenty chapters are given to the overland journey by boat and stagecoach to Carson City, including several on the Mormons, and the rest take in mining life, local politics and crime in Virginia City and San Francisco, along with a good deal of material that grows out of the journey home.