dians find with the Hudson Bay people. They contain accurate observations of the conditions in Oregon during a decade for which other sources are very scarce. Students of nature in the Pacific Northwest will take keenest delight in every word of these pioneers of science on this coast. These modest accounts of the noble daring of lonely travelers as they took their lives into their hands and penetrated the vast solitudes of "Old Oregon," suffering extreme privations and enduring appalling hardships for the benefit of mankind, will appeal to all. Now and then they meet with natives ready to stoop to acts of basest treachery. When we consider the motives of these pioneers, their fortitude and their persistence, I think that we shall be impressed with the fact that the quality of their heroism is unique.
An explorer in that early time covering the ground so thoroughly as did Douglas was of necessity brought into intimate contact with pretty much all the white people established here. He saw all that was here and all that was being planned. His records, therefore, afford not a little help toward an understanding of the forces and tendencies shaping affairs on Oregon soil.
It will be remembered that it is this Douglas for whom the Douglas spruce (Pseudotsuga Douglassi) was named. While it is quite fitting that the tree that is the monarch of the forests of the Pacific Northwest the largest and most important timber tree should bear the name of this indefatigable explorer of the flora and fauna of that region, yet the reader of his journals and letters will be struck with the fact that it was the sugar pine (Pinus Lambertiana) that impressed him most. He was virtually a worshiper of it. There was no limit to the sacrifice he was willing to make to secure specimens of its cones and twigs. Having found it he went into ecstasies over it.
This number of the Quarterly contains the first installment of the memoir, journal and letters of Douglas. It is the record of these investigations of the flora of the Pacific Northwest and of California that won for him high rank
