This volume, issued as ‘Across the Plains’, contains in addition to the title essay those on The Old Pacific Capital (Monterey), Fontainebleau, The Epilogue to An Inland Voyage, Random Memories (of his engineering days), The Lantern Bearers, A Chapter on Dreams, Beggars, Letter to a Young Gentleman, Pulvis et Umbra, and A Christmas Sermon, most of them contributions to 'Scribner's Magazine' in 1888. Their selection and arrangement for ‘Across the Plains’ were undertaken at Stevenson's wish by Sir Sidney Colvin. If, in some of these essays, ' the lights seem a little turned down,' it was not to be wondered at. They were written at Saranac in the winter of 1887-8, when it was plain that the change from Bournemouth to the United States held no hope for a permanent remedy of Stevenson's ill-health.