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Rh personal narratives used in making the history, no two wholly agree; "and yet, to the careful student, with all the evidence before him, the truth is generally clear." The leading features of the history of Oregon, Mr. Bancroft points out, are not the pursuit of conquest, but commercial enterprise and agricultural industry, "the Fur Company, the missionaries of different sects soon converted into rival traders, and the middle class from the United States, all contributing of their several characteristics to form a society at once individual and independent. It is in the missionary, rather than in the commercial or agricultural elements, that I find that romance which underlies all human endeavor before it becomes of interest sufficient for permanent preservation in the memory of mankind. A mountain-walled plain, between the coast elevations and the northern stretch of the great Andean range, with a fertile soil, a genial climate, and picturesque scenery, through a peculiar sequence of events, becomes the Western Utopia of the American States, and kindles in the breasts of those who here lay the foundations of a commonwealth the fire of patriotism, forever sacred even when fed by fallacies. The silent conquest of this area by men and women from the border, intent on empire, is a turning-point in the destinies of the country; and it is to me no less a pleasure than a duty to recognize the heroic in this conquest, and to present one more example of the behavior of the Anglo-Saxon race under the influence of American institutions." We find these remarks to a considerable extent verified as we turn over the chapters devoted to the history of the missions, which are replete with personal adventure, and varied with incidents that might serve as the framework of many romances. Mr. Bancroft is disposed to take an optimistic view, which is nearly peculiar to the frontier, of the fate of the Indians, of which he says that, "aside from the somewhat antiquated sentiments of eternal justice and the rights of men as apart from man's power to enforce his rights, the quick extermination of the aborigines may be regarded as a blessing both to the red race and to the white. . . . And this happy consummation—the swift and sharpest means of sweeping from the earth every human incumbrance—the people of the United States have never been backward about. . . . Avarice, injustice, and inhumanity are often the most important aids to civilization. In this respect, with noble intentions and devout aspirations far higher than ordinary, the settlers of Oregon but followed their destiny. They labored for the best, and quarreled not with the inevitable." The story in the present volume begins with the application of the Flathead Indians to Mr. Clarke, Indian agent at St. Louis, in 1832, for religious men to be sent "to point their people the way to heaven," and is continued till the erection of a territorial government in 1848.

first edition of this book appeared in 1880, as a companion volume to the author's already published work on "Materia Medica and Therapeutics." The edition of three thousand copies was exhausted in less than a month, anticipating the judgments of the numerous medical journals of the country, and a new edition was called for, in which the text was revised and two articles of importance were added. Evidence of continued giving of satisfaction to the needs of many readers appeared in the steady, rapid sale of the work, and a third edition appeared in 1882, again revised, and with fifty pages added. A fifth edition followed close upon a fourth, in the spring of 1883, and in it the bacillus tuberculosis was noticed, and the increase of minute organisms in pathogenic importance was recognized. The book itself, in the beginning, was undertaken while the author was Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine and of Clinical Medicine in the Medical College of Ohio, on the urgency of students and practitioners who attended his lectures, and of many readers of his therapeutical treatise. The author was more inclined to the work, because the subject was one to which he had devoted all the years of his professional life, and under the most varied conditions, of army service before and during the rebellion, and an extensive practice of sixteen years at Cincinnati. With one or two exceptions, he has had personal