Thayer wrote a series of articles for the Hartford Evening Post describing his round trip journey from Hartford to San Francisco and back. He rode from Hartford to Salt Lake City before taking the train to Lake Tahoe, and then rode the remainder of the way to San Francisco. Thayer carried a bottle of water from the Atlantic, which he poured into the Pacific before returning east, a majority of the way by train.

Mr. Thompson left New York for Chicago on October 14th, 1891, and returned to that city on May 18th in the following year. This handsome volume records by pen and pencil what he saw and thought of lands, seas, men, and cities during that time. He began by going across the Continent to Victoria, British Columbia ; went thence to Vancouver, and from Vancouver sailed to Japan. Japan seems to have exercised on him its customary fascination. China did not please him as much. (Why, we may ask, the very hideous picture of "After the Execution" ?).

Until recently little information was available on Gray. It is now known, however, that he was born in the farm hamlet of East Springfield, New York, located about 50 miles west of Albany on the Western Turnpike. Members of the Gray family were prosperous farmers who had been in the Cooperstown region since shortly after the Revolution.