system by nature delicate and high-strung. Thenceforth he had to work imprisoned by diseases and all but entire loss of sight.
Upon his return, while in search of health, he dictated from his notes and diary, the story of the summer to his companion in the journey, Quincy Adams Shaw, and the publication of it began in the Knickerbocker Magazine in February, 1847, with the title The Oregon Trail, or a Shim- mer Journey out of Bounds. It was republished in book form in 1849, when the publisher, availing himself of the California excitement, to catch the eye, enlarged the title into The California and Oregon Trail, being Sketches of Prairie and Rocky Mountain Life. The secondary title pre- cisely describes the contents of the book and the original name Oregon Trail must have been selected in 1847 for the same reasons which led the publisher in 1849 to add Cali- fornia to the title-page. As far as the contents go, the name Santa Fé Trail would have been equally appropriate.
Before the appearance of The Oregon Trail in book form, Parkman began the composition of the Conspiracy of Pon- tiae. In the midst of obstacles, always apparently insur- mountable, and for long stretches actually so, with heroic fortitude he kept at work when most men would have given up in despair. For many years he was unable to read or write for more than five minutes at a time, and the first part of Pontiac was written at the rate of six lines a day. His courage did not fail, and after three years of intermittent labor the completed work was offered to the public (1851).
With wise appreciation of his own powers and of the limi- tations under which he labored, he had tried his hand on an episode of his main theme, the final struggle of the Indian, after the collapse of the power of France, to roll back the advancing tide of English civilization. The story of Pon- tiac required neither the mass of reading nor the critical in- sight and ripened judgment which the later works demanded. On the other hand, the range of action from Philadelphia to Mackinac, the varied scenes of frontier life and warfare gave
