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Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v3.djvu/168

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Travellers and Explorers, 1846-1900

called "Old Jacob." He tells an interesting story through James A. Little in Jacob Hamblin, a Narrative of his Personal Experiences (1881). A devoted Mormon, he was never unfriendly to other sects and often assisted persons of opposite faith, at least on two occasions saving lives.

The list of books on Indians is enormous, the Bureau of Ethnology alone having produced a great many, including the series of thirty-two invaluable Annual Reports inaugurated by J. W. Powell, as well as more than fifty-eight equally important Bulletins. George Bird Grinnell's Indians of Today (1900) and The North Americans of Yesterday (1901) by Frederick S. Dellenbaugh are two volumes which present a wide general survey.

A famous man associated with Indians throughout his life was Kit Carson, one of the most remarkable and upright characters of the Far West. Dewitt C. Peters persuaded Carson to dictate to him the story of his life. The last and complete edition is Kit Carson s Life and Adventures (1873). George D. Brewerton in Harper s Magazine (1853) wrote an account of "A Ride with Kit Carson through the Great American Desert and the Rocky Mountains." This ride was made in 1848 and was over the Spanish Trail eastward from Los Angeles. The springs are few and far between in Southern Nevada and South-Eastern California, and in studying this route and the literature pertaining to the region Walter C. Mendenhall's Some Desert Watering Places (U. S. Water Supply Paper 224, 1909) is most useful.

Some experiences were published long afterward, as in the case of William Lewis Manly's Death Valley in '49, which was never printed till 1894. It is deeply interesting. The author, arrived at Green River, decided with several others to shorten the journey by taking to the river, and was hurled through the torrential waters of Red Canyon and Lodore. Later he joined a California caravan to suffer terribly in Death Valley.

John Bidwell, an "earliest" pioneer, has contributed to The Century Magazine, vol. XIX, and to Out West Magazine, vol. XX, some invaluable reminiscences. He was with the first emigrant train to California. It crossed in 1841. In 1853 Captain Howard Stansbury made a report on his Explo-