Page:Hubert Howe Bancroft His Work and His Method.djvu/6

163 become so scarce that second-hand dealers are hardly able to supply the demand even at very high prices.

Inception. The inception of the famous Bancroft Library dates back to 1859. Wm. H. Knight, who was then in Bancroft's service as editor of statistical works relative to the Pacific coast, was requested to clear the shelves around his desk to receive every book in the store having reference to this country. Looking through his stock he was agreeably surprised to find some fifty or seventy-five volumes. There was no fixed purpose at this time to collect a library. Noticing accidentally some old pamphlets in an antiquarian book-store, he bethought him to add these to his nucleus; then looked more attentively through other stores and stalls in San Francisco, Sacramento, Portland and Victoria, purchasing a copy of every book relating to his great and growing subject. During his next visit to the eastern states, without special pains or search, he secured whatever fell under his observation in second-hand stores of New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

He had collected in all not far from a thousand volumes and had begun to feel satisfied. "When, however, (he declares) I visited London and Paris, and rummaged the enormous stocks of second-hand books in the hundreds of stores of that class, my eyes began to open. . . . And so it was, when the collection had reached one thousand volumes I fancied I had them all; when it had grown to five thousand, I saw it was but begun." (177) Finally, special journeys were made to all parts of Europe, as well as the Americas, in the interest of his collection. "And not only was every nook and corner of the world thus ramsacked, but whole libraries were purchased as opportunity offered." While his vague ideas of materials for writing a history gradually assumed more definite form, Bancroft had as yet no idea of writing a history himself. As the collecting proceeded his subject enlarged, until the territory covered was the entire western part of North America from Panama to Alaska, including the Rocky Mountain region, all Central America and Mexico, or about one-twelfth of the earth's entire surface.

The bibliophile reached the settled determination to make his collection as complete as it was possible to make it. Neither time, nor money, nor personal attention would be spared. Agents were appointed in all the leading book marts of the world; no book must be lost because of its high price; no opportunity was to be missed to obtain everything in existence on the subject. By buying up at auction in European cities individual collections, and even libraries, the Bancroft Library was enriched beyond measure. In