Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/160

I 50 Reviews of Books reprint. Chronologically the books extend over nearly a century of American history and geographically they reach from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In point of time, the first place belongs to Pittman's brief descrip- tions. The scanty observations on the posts and settlements along the Mississippi recorded by this British engineer would scarcely have been worth placing in type in 1770 or reprinting at the present day had chroniclers been more numerous in the isolated French villages after the Jesuit Relations ceased and before the advent of George Rogers Clark and Governor John Todd. Pittman as an ensign in the British army entered the Floridas with His Majesty's troops soon after the transfer in 1763 from Spanish to British control. During the ensuing five years he was engaged in making surveys along the Mississippi and the Gulf tribu- taries. The travel necessary to these labors gave him opportimity of making observations which he used later in his descriptions. Beginning with the Balise, a defensive post maintained on an island near the mouth of the Mississippi, Pittman described in order the settlements and the mouths of the principal tributaries as one advances up the river to the village of St. Louis. The latter contained at this time about twenty families. To New Orleans he naturally gave the largest space, making what is really a history of the beginnings of the city. In this connection he printed, as an appendix, an edict adopted by the council of the city in 1768 during a contest between the French inhabitants and the Spanish authorities. Pittman's maps, which have been used so frequently by writers and by other engineers, are reprinted in the present volume. The notes made for this edition while not voluminous are of decided value. More than half a century after Pittman was describing the French villages in the fertile American Bottom of Illinois, another Englishman was picturing to his countrymen the attractions of the same lands as an inducement to migration. Fordham came to America with Birkbeck in 1817 when the latter attempted with George Flower to transplant a bit of old England to the Illinois Territory. The Narrative is made up of transcripts taken from the letters of Fordham and from a journal during his American trip, and " positively identified " as his work, although the names of the persons in England to whom the letters were addressed were not copied. The transcripts descended through Fordham's niece to her son. Dr. Spence, of Cleveland, Ohio, in whose hands they now are. They are here printed as originals. Seven of the letters were written at various points on the inland journey from Virginia to southern Indiana and ten from the several places visited by Fordham in the region thereabouts. The journal was kept at the English settlements in Illinois during the winter of 1817 and 1818. The observations are chiefly on the quality of the soil, the variety of the trees, and the distinctive characteristics of the inhabitants. Ford- ham belongs to the class of writers such as Birkbeck, Flint, Fearon, Welljy and others who journeyed along the Ohio River during the period