Baily’s tour took him down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers past the settlements on the western frontier and, what is even more remarkable about this early and very rare account, back to the East coast by way of the hazardous Wilderness Trail, later known as the Natchez Trace. Students of American history have generally recognized that this material contains some of the most intimate and vivid glimpses of American life during the first territorial expansion of the United States. General readers of Americana will find the journal a human and social document of primary importance.   The Journal, published twelve years after Baily’s death in 1856, and then hidden behind a 75-page memoir of his scien­tific accomplishments, is here edited by Professor Holmes, who has omitted the memoir, divided the journal into ten chapters, has added extensive notes identifying persons, places, and events, and has provided a scholarly introduction illuminating the changes in Baily’s viewpoint.