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Stephen Harriman Long was an American Army officer with a particular zest for leading expeditions into the unexplored American West. Between 1816 and 1823, Long headed five expeditions that traveled an estimated 26,000 miles from the Atlantic Coast to the Rocky Mountains and from the headwaters of the Canadian River in New Mexico to Lake Winnipeg in Canada. This book deals with two of his northern journeys -- the only two for which the explorer's personal journals are known to have survived. Published here for the first time are fully annotated, accurate transcriptions of Long's day-by-day accounts of the expeditions of 1817 and 1823. The 1817 journal describes his trip up the Mississippi River to the Falls of St. Anthony at present-day Minneapolis and back down the river to Fort Belle Fontaine on the Missouri. The 1823 journal covers Long's last major exploring journey, which went from Philadelphia west across the present states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and returned east along the old fur trade routes in the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario, through the Great Lakes to Niagara Falls and the newly opened portions of the Erie Canal in New York, and back to Philadelphia again. The two journals are models of detailed reporting that reveal the writer's classical education and scientific knowledge. They also are a reflection of the man himself -- efficient, logical, concise, meticulous, persevering -- a man cheerful in the face of physical discomfort but intolerant of incompetence or irresponsibility on the part of his men. In 1817 Long was accompanied by only seven soldiers. On the 1823 expedition he was assisted by a complement of specialists -- an astronomer, a geologist, a naturalist, and a landscape artist. To these "gentlemen of the party" were added soldiers, guides, voyageurs, and interpreters in varying numbers as the expedition traveled by stagecoach, horseback, Red River cart, canoe, and steamboat. The journal's pages record the party's effort to cross Lake Superior in a snowstorm; buffalo hunts to bolster their dwindling food supply; talks and feasts with Indian leaders; detailed descriptions of military posts and sites for future forts; encounters with fur traders, frontier settlers, tavernkeepers and missionaries -- all of whom contributed information on the northern reaches of a new nation. Despite the shortcomings of equipment and, occasionally, personnel, Long and his men gathered remarkable and often unique information. Thus his journals are especially valuable for their firsthand observations of the Midwest and its people in the early 1800s. Complementing Lon's matter-of-fact account of the 1823 expedition is the journal of his astronomer, James E. Colhoun, which is also published for the first time in this book. A navy midshipman who was a relative of Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, Colhoun wrote an ebullient record of the journey. The 27-year-old was both well read and well traveled, and his journal is spiced with colorful references to distant cultures and extensive excerpts from other authors. Documents and correspondence relating to the 1817 and 1823 expeditions, including Long's financial records, appear in the two appendixes. -- Dust jacket.