364 T. C. ELLIOTT
obtained indirectly from the widow and the personal papers of the deceased and possibly from such an acquaintance as the Reverend Samuel Peters, D. D., and, therefore, his sketch was both incomplete and incorrect. Doctors Fothergill and Lettsom knew Captain Carver only as the recognized author of a book of travel which had been only recently published but had gone through two editions and which was written in good style and language and described a part of the empire that was just then very much in the eye and mind of the British people. Carver's Travels contains the names Ponteac, Mackinac, Niagara, Detroit, Grand Portage and Mississippi, of the Sioux and Assinniboiles, and many others just then of almost magic interest in London. That the author of such a book should have died from want and starvation seemed very sad to Doctors Fothergill and Lettsom. 22 And so it was, for Captain Carver was not really a bad man, and neither was he a good man ; and that is all the epitaph we can write under his name.
The fact that Carver's Travels was dedicated to Joseph Banks, Esq., the president of the Royal Society and a man of scientific knowledge, added to the dignity of the book, but meant little as to its real accuracy or reliability, for a great many other books were, according to custom, dedicated to the president of that society, whoever he might be. But such dedication did cause the manuscript and other papers of this author to be deposited in the British Museum and did make it obligatory that the author have assistance in the final prep- aration for publication. Speaking of the Carver papers in the British Museum, Mr. John Thomas Lee says : "The jour- nals and the Indian vocabulary are in the handwriting of the author, and have numerous alterations and additions. They do not appear to have been written from day to day, 23 but rather to be copies of original notes, with additions from memory. * * * * Evidently Carver's manuscript was not considered suitable for publication in its original form, for a reviser seems to have been employed to prepare it for the
22 See documents printed in this number of Oregon Historical Quarterly.
23 Henry R. Schoolcraft was of the opinion that Carver did not "keep diurnal notes". See page 168 of his Personal Memoirs (Philadelphia, i8sO-
