Page:Emergence of Frances Fuller Victor-Historian.djvu/20

 comments on the acts of the legislature, that is where an act was of sufficient importance to deserve comment. Of course I can see the act, but I cannot know the motive or the circumstances that prompted it. Who could do this for me?

2d I want biographies of all the men of any mark, in early times and later. How am I to get them? ...

I should be glad of pen pictures of the first Territorial officers. How is the Statesman for clear facts? It is so hard to steer a way between two partisan papers like the Statesman and Oregonian and do everybody evenhanded justice. Write to me of these things. Of course this is Mr. Bancroft's history: but I am getting everything in shape as he never could—not being so familiar with the ground and if we agree about it when I am ready to begin, I shall probably write it. In any case it is my conscientious desire to do my work faithfully.

In explanation it should be mentioned here that most of the material in the Bancroft Library—books, periodicals, newspapers, and manuscripts—had been indexed by subject for all references in each item to historical material to be used in the writing of the Works. Moreover, with the index as a guide, notes had been extracted and filed on each subject. It was this excellent system of indexing and note-taking devised by Bancroft, Henry L. Oak, and William Nemos that made possible the writing of the histories from original sources with such dispatch and accuracy. With the drudgery of indexing and note-taking performed by others, the assistant doing the actual writing was free to begin at once with a critical examination of his sources and the gathering of any needed additional information.

Mrs. Victor's letters in December 1879 reveal the progress she had made toward a clarified knowledge of Oregon history in a year's study of the sources available to her. To Deady she confided that she had been forced to the conclusion that the views she had expressed in The River of the West had been far too mild. By this time she had completed much of volume I of the History of Oregon, and to Elwood Evans she wrote: "I should be glad if you could go over some of my Oregon chapters—and you would be delighted. I have