Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/247

 Captain Gray's Company is now very rare and when a copy turns up and goes on the market it commands a high price. The reason for its scarcity has been explained by Mr. Frederick W. Skiff in his interesting book, Adventures in Americana:

"The first romance or novel printed west of the Rocky Mountains was entitled Captain Gray's Company, written by Abigail Scott Duniway and published in Portland, Oregon, in 1859. The printing and binding of this volume was very poorly, even crudely done. The edition was small. Mrs. Duniway either could not or did not remove the larger part of the edition from the printing plant and subsequently the printing plant burned and the fire consumed the unremoved portion of the edition. It is probable that less than seventy-five copies of the book were actually given out to the public and of this number Mrs. Duniway presented copies to relatives and friends. From these presentation sources over the space of years have come nearly all the available copies that we have had. Three copies of the book have passed through my ownership, while a fourth copy remains in my possession."

Mrs. Duniway divided Captain Gray's Company into 36 chapters, engagingly captioned as follows: