As Capt. Lorenzo Sitgreaves set out in 1851 to explore the southern portion of the Four Corners region (won in the recent war with Mexico), his party included Dr. Samuel Woodhouse, a thirty-year-old physician and naturalist who kept a journal of their travels from New York to California. Woodhouse recorded three weeks in San Antonio, made daily entries across the Trans-Pecos, and, after a hiatus in Santa Fe, resumed his journal on the march to Zuni Pueblo. Midway into their three weeks at Zuni, he nearly died from a rattlesnake bite and was scarcely recovered when the explorers again started...