Roughing it De Luxe

Luxury trains, expensive hotels and elaborate meals give Irvin S. Cobb plenty of material for teasing travelers who claim to be roughing it in the American West. His account opens with a trip from Chicago toward the Grand Canyon, where the grandeur of the scenery competes with the habits of his fellow passengers. A camera enthusiast records almost everything, while an anxious traveler repeatedly asks whether he must change trains at Williams.

The California passages turn from mountains, coastal bays and sea lions to real estate agents and sprawling tourist hotels. Cobb mixes appreciation of the landscape with jokes about the people selling it and the visitors enjoying it. These travel sketches offer a look at comfortable western tourism through a narrator who keeps noticing the gap between adventurous talk and well catered reality. Readers interested in American humor and the social details of travel will find both in his descriptions.