This manuscript journal was written in 1817 by Thomas Wright, a druggist and veterinarian, as he traveled from his native home in England to the Morris Birkbeck settlement in southern Illinois. The pages are filled with his optimism and courage as he set off on a long and winding journey over open ocean, to distant shores, and across the wild American West. His careful and detailed observations of his trip down the Ohio River make this piece one of the finest unpublished works in existence on early American river travel to this region. The journal also paints a cross-spectrum picture of early Americans, as Wright describes the people he met along the way, from lawyers and merchants to African American freed peoples.