The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls

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"Our journey is through ghostly deserts, sage brush and alkali, and
rocks without form or color, a sad corner of the world. I confess I am
not jolly, but mighty calm, in my distresses. My illness is a subject of
great mirth to some of my fellow travellers, and I smile rather sickly
at their jests.

"We are going along Bitter Creek just now, a place infamous in the
history of emigration, a place I shall remember myself among the
blackest.--R.L.S."


When California was finally reached he decided to rest and recover
strength by camping out for a few days in the Coast Range Mountains
beyond Monterey, but the anxiety and strain of the long journey had been
greater than he realized, and he broke down and became very ill. For two
nights he lay out under the trees in a kind of stupor and at length was
rescued by two frontiersmen in charge of a goat-ranch, who took him to