Setting out to visit his friends in Woodstock, New Brunswick, and with all intentions to return to the United States to attend Columbia University in the fall, Tappan Adney, at the age of 18, embarked on a trip that would ultimately set the course of his life. Tappan Adney’s writings, illustrations, and photographs were published in Harper’s Magazine.

This follow-up journal to 2010’s first volume, takes us back to a time when wildness was still something easily accessible and wildlife abundant. These experiences, seen through the eyes of a young man from the city and illustrated with his own sketches, photographs, and remarkably accurate maps, bring readers into this world, allowing them to walk and canoe the roads and rivers with him.

The first volume showed us a remarkable young man who fell under the spell of the 19th century New Brunswick wilderness and the Maliseet people. Now, in this second volume of Adney’s journals, we meet a man still passionate but wiser, transformed from enthusiastic hunter to reflective woodsman and decades ahead of his time in foreseeing the need for environmental protection. Recounted in the dialect of the day with the added flair of Adney’s inimitable humour, and augmented by maps, sketches, and photographs, these journals provide an authentic glimpse into the world before the turn of the 20th century.