the Presbyterian Church went to Oregon in 1836, taking with him a physician, Marcus Whitman. Parker wrote A Journal of an Exploring Tour Beyond the Rocky Mountains (1838), one of the valuable books of the period. Whitman became so deeply interested in the religious welfare of the Indians that he turned missionary and established a working centre at Waiilatpu. Later, in the winter of 1842-43, he made the now much discussed overland journey by the southern route to Washington. This adventure is recorded in How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon (1895) by O. W. Nixon. Whitman is said to have exposed nefarious British designs to the American government, but this service has been disputed on good authority. W. I. Marshall is one of those who oppose the "saviour" idea, and he presents his views in the Report of the American Historical Association (1900) and also in Acquisition of Oregon, and the Long Suppressed Evidence about Marcus Whitman (1911). At any rate, Whitman was a splendid character and devoted his life to work among the Indians, who, imagining some superstitious grievance against the whites, murdered many of them, including their own benefactor and his wife, and held the others prisoners. M. Cannon in his account of pioneer days tells the story of this massacre in Waiilatpu, Its Rise and Fall (1915).

The captives were rescued by the skill and determined bearing of one of the greatest frontiersmen of the West, Peter Skene Ogden. Ogden, while not an American, was next thing to it, as his father was born in Newark, New Jersey, but the family, being royalists, travelled to more genial climes at the outbreak of the trouble with George III. T. C. Elliott, in a very entertaining and instructive pamphlet, Peter Skene Ogden, Fur Trader (1910), relates the remarkable career of Ogden, chiefly. in the region south of the forty-ninth parallel. Ogden wrote Traits of American Indian Life and Character by a Fur Trader (1853), revised in manuscript by Jesse Applegate. Ogden is said to have taken it to Washington Irving, who was prevented by circumstances from editing it.

Most of the travellers who penetrated the Western wilderness in those early days were close and quite accurate observers, and many of their books, like Gregg's and Kendall's and Edwin Bryant's, have become of immeasurable historical value. Another whose works take a similar high place is Thomas

Jefferson Farnham. No library of Americana can be considered complete which lacks his Travels in the Great Western Prairies, the Anahuac and Rocky Mountains and in the Oregon Territory (1843), and his Life, Adventures and Travels in California (1849). Farnham followed some seldom travelled trails, and he tells not only what he saw but what he heardgiving in the latter field one of the early descriptions of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, not accurate but interesting. A missionary who roamed widely over Oregon was Father P. J. De Smet, and his writings are among the most vital, especially Oregon Missions and Travels over the Rocky Mountains in 184546 (1847) and Letters and Sketches (1843).

The Santa Fé Trail coupled the Rio Grande and the mighty Missouri, as has been mentioned, by a well-beaten and more or less easy and comfortable way which halted at the city of Santa Fé. Thence on to Los Angeles there were two or three routes open to the traveller, taking any one of which was sure to make him wish he had chosen another. One led down the Rio Grande into Mexico, thence westward and up to the Gila through Tucson, following the Gila on west to the Colorado, the Mohave desert, and to Cajon Pass; the other turned north from Santa Fé and straggled over the mountains, to cross the Grand River and the Green at the first opportunity the canyons permitted (that on the Green being at what was afterwards known as Gunnison Crossing), thence through the Wasatch, down to the Virgin, and by that stream to the Mohave desert, and across that stretch of Hades by the grace of God. This trail was laid out in 1830 by William Wolfskill, an American, but as it was travelled mostly by Spaniards it was called the Spanish Trail. Between this and the extreme southern route was a possible way down the Gila, and another between that and the majestic Grand Canyon, followed in 1776 eastward as far as the Hopi (Moqui) villages by Garces the Spanish missionary; but to take either intermediate route at that time was almost like signing one's death warrant. They were not often taken before 1846. Much about the early trails and trappers and missionaries is told in Breaking the Wilderness (1905) by Frederick S. Dellenbaugh.

The Oregon Trail, bearing far to the north, through South Pass and down Snake River, was extended to the Columbia and

thence around south to California, but, before the "Days of '49," although Ogden, Jedediah Smith, and Frémont had dared the mid-passage across the Great Basin, there was no real route directly to the rich, inviting mission settlements of the Franciscan friars: settlements that were a world unto themselves delightfully described by Alfred Robinson in Life in California During a Residence of Several Years in that Territory, Etc. By an American (1846). And in Two Years Before the Mast (1840) R. H. Dana has some interesting chapters on this primitive California paradise. The historical side is presented by Fr. Zephyrin Englehardt in an extensive work, The Missions and Missionaries of California (1911).

In the early forties California was nothing more than a detached colony nominally belonging to Mexico but ruled over, so far as it was ruled at all, by the Mission friars and the military governor in an arbitrary and personal fashion. Its rich soil and attractive coast were coveted by France, by Great Britain, and by the United States. This great prize slipping from Mexico's fist had its northern limit at the fortysecond parallel and its eastern along the upper Arkansas and down that river to the 100th meridian, down that to Red River, along that stream to a point north of the Sabine, and by the Sabine to the Gulf of Mexico. Texas took away the portion from the Sabine to the Nueces and claimed to the Rio Grande. Thus matters stood at the time of the annexation of Texas, with its claim of a western boundary at the Rio Grande which the United States had undertaken to maintain with the sword.

There was one statesman in Congress who had a clear perception of conditions and possibilities. This was Thomas Hart Benton, whose home was in St. Louis and was the rendezvous for leading trappers and explorers. His famous phrase as he pointed to the sunset and said "There lies the road to India" recognized the approach to each other of Europe and Cathay westward across the Rocky Mountains and has appropriately been carved on his monument. In his Thirty Years' View... 1820 to 1850 (1861) there is continual evidence of his firm belief in the phenomenal value of the Far West region and in a development which has since taken place. Benton was one of the chief political figures of the time. Biographies of him

have been written by Theodore Roosevelt (1887) and by William M. Meigs (1904).

As the fourth decade of the nineteenth century opened, California was receiving many emigrants from the Eastern States, chiefly by the Oregon Trail. About this time appears on the scene a striking personality, John A. Sutter, independent, indefatigable, who immediately created a unique fortified settlement which, having been born in Switzerland, he called New Helvetia, but which was known generally as Sutter's Fort. It was begun in 1841 and completed in 1845, on the site of the present city of Sacramento. Although Sutter was Swiss he may be classed as an American in view of all the circumstances connected with his life. His fort mounted carronades and cannon and was garrisoned by about forty well armed, drilled, uniformed Indians. There were extra arms for more if needed. In his "Diary" printed in the Argonaut (San Francisco, 26 Jan., 2, 9, 16 Feb., 1878) Sutter tells of his own doings, and in the Life and Times of John A. Sutter (1907) T. J. Schoonover relates the entire story of this remarkable pioneer, the good friend of everybody but "bankrupted by thieves."

By 1846 the dispute with Great Britain over Oregon was settled and the Americans there knew where they belonged. They had been warmly defended and assisted by the then head of Hudson Bay Company affairs in that region, John McLoughlin, who himself finally became an American. The story of his life is given by Frederick V. Holman, John McLoughlin, The Father of Oregon (1900), and in McLoughlin and Old Oregon (1900) by Mrs. Emery Dye.

Benton's son-in-law, John C. Frémont, had conducted an expedition in 1842 along the Oregon Trail to the Wind River Mountains, and he was selected to carry on a new reconnaissance, ostensibly to connect the survey of the Oregon Trail with survey work done on the Pacific Coast by Wilkes. But this 1843-44 expedition did not halt in Oregon. It headed southward into Mexican territory along the eastern edge of the Sierras, hunting for a mythical Buenaventura River that would have made a fine military base had it existed. Not discovering that entrancing Elysian valley, Frémont crossed the high Sierras in dead winter to Sutter's Fort, returning by the See also Reminiscences in MS., Bancroft Collection.

Spanish Trail to Utah and breaking through the Wasatch east of Utah Lake. His Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842 and to Oregon and Northern California in the Years 1843-44 (1845) was a revelation to most of the world. Ten thousand copies were printed by the government, and it was reprinted by professional publishers, minus the scientific matter, in their regular lists.

The very day Frémont handed in this report, 1 March, 1845, the United States flung the gauntlet in the face of Mexico by admitting Texas and assuming the Texan boundary affair. War was inevitable and everybody knew it. Therefore when Frémont headed a new "topographical surveying" expedition to the Far West he had a force of sixty well-armed marksmen. When he reached California and found an incipient rebellion already organized by Americans, he placed himself with this powerful party and the American flag at its head, supplanting the Bear Flag of the revolutionists and giving immediate notice thereby to the other covetous nations that California was only for the United States.

The Bear Flag revolt from its beginning may be studied in Scraps of California History Never Before Published. A Biographical Sketch of William B. Ide, etc. (1880), privately printed by Simeon Ide. In H. H. Bancroft's History of California, vol. v, is another account; and the revolt and Frémont are sharply criticized by Josiah Royce in California from the Conquest in 1846 to the Second Vigilance Committee in San Francisco (1888). Royce also gave his analysis of Frémont's character in the Atlantic Monthly in 1890.

Frémont tells his own story in Memoirs of My Life (1887; only vol. I of the projected two volumes was published). This contains a sketch of "The Life of Senator Benton in Connection with Western Explorations" from the pen of his daughter, Jessie Benton Frémont. Frémont's career up to the time he ran for President was written by John Bigelow as a campaign document in 1856: Memoir of the Life of John C. Frémont. Another Life of Frémont (1856) is by Charles W. Upham, but there was no single volume containing all the story of this active explorer and politician till Frémont and '49, by Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, appeared in 1914.

California now attracted world attention, and there are a