268 T. C. Elliott. the birds on the Columbia & I in quest of rocks and stones all these bucks came with letters from the President of the U. States and you know it would not be good policy not to treat them politely they are a perfect nuisance — " etc. From his wide acquaintance and fondness for comradeship it is evident that he was quite a voluminous correspondent. Beyond his personal letters the extent of Mr. Ogden's literary work is not certain. In the Bancroft Collection there is a manuscript (dictated) by Mr. Jesse Applegate, who was one of the most intelligent and observing among the Oregon pioneers of the Forties, which states : "Peter Skeen Ogden wrote very extensively on the Indians — he showed the Mss. to Mr. Applegate ; it comprised his own early experiences ; he was the discoverer of the Humboldt river. We had no reading and Mr. Ogden gave it to me as a Winter's amuse- ment. It was full of interesting episodes. Mr. Applegate revised and made many suggestions. It ran back to the union of the two companies. Mr. Ogden brought it to Wash- ington Irving who undertook to edit it, but died before its completion." In the collections of the Oregon Historical Society, at Portland there is a letter by Mr. George T. Allan, for a long time a clerk at Ft. Vancouver and afterward a resident of Oregon, which reads : "Mr. Ogden possessed considerable ability as a writer and literary man, and wrote some very interesting sketches of his adventures in the Indian country, which I perused in manuscript and partly copied for him in 1849. I believe they were afterwards published, but I have never seen the book." And Mr. Archibald McKinlay, writing to Elwood Evans in March, 1882, says : — "Peter S. Ogden did publish a book. I never saw but one copy. I have the dedication written by Washington Irving dedicated to 1 Lady Simpson. It is in his own handwriting. It was more of what I would call a ro- mance." This introduction is extremely graceful.
