America is forever being discovered – revealed, unveiled, analyzed, criticized, and praised by those who come to it from outside. Its fascination, for those who would commit their lives to it, remains, after almost four centuries, undiminished, and those who lead the way continue to send back reports of the world they find, the people they encounter, the pluses and minuses of life in America which will shape the decisions of others. In the nineteenth century and after, these reports became voluminous. Migrant letters to prospective followers of that era abound and have been collected and anthologized, along with commentaries in artistic form: novels, poetry, and plays. And in the twentieth century, television and instantaneous worldwide news reporting have created a running commentary, sometimes perceptive, often grotesque, on the state of the nation and its people, flashed to every corner of the globe.

But reports from the founding years – the formative years when America was not a center but a periphery, a far boundary, a marchland of the metropolitan world, exotic and seemingly open – are rare, and they are especially revealing. For in the long history of America's lure for people throughout the world, the later eighteenth century, and especially the 15 years before the outbreak of the Revolution, has a special place.