The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [581]
"I have graven it within the hills, and my vengeance upon the dust within the rock."
THE JOURNAL OF JULIUS RODMAN
Being an Account of the First Passage across the Rocky Mountains of North America Ever Achieved by Civilized Man
This is an unfinished serial novel, of which only six installments were published in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine's January through June issues in 1840. At the time, Poe was a contributing editor of the journal. He was fired in June 1840 by William Burton and refused to continue the novel. In 1840, members of the United States Senate believed the story to be a true account. Robert Greenhow (1800–1854), a native of Richmond, Virginia whose family may have known Poe, wrote a paragraph about the work in U.S. Senate Document of the 26th Congress, entitled "Memoir, Historical and Political, on the Northwest Coast of North America, and the Adjacent Territories; Illustrated by a Map and a Geographical View of Those Countries". The document stated, "It is proper to notice here an account of an expedition across the American continent, made between 1791 and 1794, by a party of citizens of the United States, under the direction of Julius Rodman, whose journal has been recently discovered in Virginia, and is now in course of publication in a periodical magazine at Philadelphia." Greenhow admitted that the full expedition had not yet been completely reported. This unintended "hoax" on the U.S. Senate suggests Poe's ability to add credibility to his fiction.
THE JOURNAL OF JULIUS RODMAN.
BEING AN ACCOUNT OF THE FIRST PASSAGE ACROSS THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS OF NORTH AMERICA EVER ACHIEVED BY CIVILIZED MAN.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. — INTRODUCTORY.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER I. — INTRODUCTORY.
WHAT we must consider an unusual piece of good fortune has enabled us to present our readers, under this head, with a narrative of very remarkable character, and certainly of very deep interest. The Journal which follows not only embodies a relation of the first successful attempt to cross the gigantic barriers of that immense chain of mountains which stretches from the Polar Sea in the north, to the Isthmus of Darien in the south, forming a craggy and snow-capped rampart throughout its whole course, but, what is of still greater importance, gives the particulars of a tour, beyond these mountains, through an immense extent of territory, which, at this day, is looked upon as totally untravelled and unknown, and which, in every map of the country to which we can obtain access, is marked as “an unexplored region.” It is, moreover, the only unexplored region within the limits of the continent of North America. Such being the case, our friends will know how to pardon us for the slight amount of unction with which we have urged this Journal upon the public attention. For our own parts, we have found, in its perusal, a degree, and a species of interest such as no similar narrative ever inspired. Nor do we think that our relation to these papers, as the channel through which they will be first made known, has had more than a moderate influence in begetting this interest. We feel assured that all our readers will unite with us in thinking the adventures here recorded unusually entertaining and important. The peculiar character of the gentleman who was the leader and soul of the expedition, as well as its historian, has imbued what he has written with a vast deal of romantic fervor, very different from the luke-warm and statistical air which pervades most records of the kind. Mr. James E. Rodman, from whom we obtained the MS., is well known to many of the readers of this Magazine; and partakes, in some degree, of that temperament which embittered the earlier portion of the life of his grandfather, Mr. Julius Rodman, the writer of the narrative. We allude to an hereditary hypochondria. It was the instigation of this disease which, more than any thing else, led him to attempt the extraordinary journey here detailed.