Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/412



The Yamhills. An Indian Romance. By, author and publisher. (McMinnville, Oregon: 1904. pp. 187.)

This is an indigenous production. It matters not whether or not the author is a native son he draws his thought and sentiment direct from the soil, the woods, the streams, and the mountains of Oregon. He finds all the elements of a home here and lives his life here in wholeness.

This book is a gem. (I am not speaking of its formal literary character, though that is creditable.) It is calculated to make the thoughtful reader orient himself, as it were, in the Oregon environment. Having read it he will plant his feet more firmly on Oregon soil and be here at home. The sympathetic reader laying aside this book will find thenceforth that all things Oregonian assume not quite so bare, bleak, and somewhat forbidding an aspect as of yore, but that all will develop background and halo of color and sentiment.

It seemed a comparatively easy matter for the first generation of Oregonians to load themselves up in canvas-covered wagons and bear the trip across the plains and become fixed and prosperous on their donation claims; but it seems decidedly difficult for the second generation of Oregonians to nourish their thought and sentiment in this new home. It is probably inevitable that generations should come and go, maintaining but a weak and flabby spirit of local patriotism, before their social mind and heart attain deeply rooted strength and vigor drawn from their native haunt. With the help of a book like this, however, we shall soon have our own "Quest for the Holy Grail" and our own "Niebelungen treasure" as themes for our future literary masterpieces. This modest little book of Mr. Cooper's reminds us pleasantly that the land we occupy has been the scene of real human interests for aeons before our day of traffic and trouble. Other and greater books notably those of Professor Thomas Condon and Superintendent Horace S. Lyman have done the same. Yet Mr. Cooper's does it in a unique way.

The title and sub-title sufficiently indicate its scope.