Page:Emergence of Frances Fuller Victor-Historian.djvu/3

 membership. Genuinely pleased, she replied: "I thank you sincerely for the compliment, and the more that it is the first public recognition won by twenty-five years of pains taking work on Oregon historical and otherwise. I shall be happy to give what aid I can to your society in the future as I have in the past to all efforts to bring out the fact-the truth I mean-of history."

Recognition continued to come to Mrs. Victor in her last years. With evident satisfaction she wrote to Professor Young on November 9, 1901:

"A week ago I had a very pleasant and entertaining visit from Capt. H. M . Chittenden who spent the day with me. He was on his way home from San Francisco, and could only stop over from the morning to the evening train. I have not seen his book yet in its proper form, but have read most of the proofs, and have already written a notice which was in the Oregonian two weeks ago. ... The McMillan Company has sent me Mowry's book on Whitman with the request that I review it for the American Historical Review, . . . Prof. Bourne also sent me his "Essays," a valuable contribution to historical studies."

Hiram Martin Chittenden had begun to correspond with Mrs. Victor when he was writing on Yellowstone Park and continued to consult and question her on various disputed topographical and historical points while working on his history of the fur trade. When the manuscript of his book was completed in 1900, he sent it to her for criticism. Laboriously she read and made notes on the several hundred pages as a favor, and Chittenden gave her permission to use any material from his work she wished in revising her River of the West. As have all writers on the fur trade since, he had