Cowboys and Englishmen...do they mix? One Englishman set out to discover for himself what the western life was like in the 1880s. From Texas to British Columbia, Morley Roberts' character tramped around with hardly a dollar in his pocket, taking work where he could find it, riding the rails, and observing American ways. An English novelist and short-story writer, Roberts, was fond of the tramping style of travel. This immensely entertaining and funny account of his tramp around the "western avernus" (Morley's take on western pronunciation) of America is one of jewels of his body of writing.