Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/410

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Documents.

for this inference is found in Burnett's statement of the amount of copy that he sent—"some hundred and twentyfive pages of foolscap;" a second distinct basis for this conclusion is found in connection with George Wilkes' "History of Oregon," published in New York in 1845. The title page of that book reads as follows: "The History of Oregon, Geographical and Political, by George Wilkes. Embracing an analysis of the old Spanish claims, the British pretensions, the United States title; an account of the present condition and character of the country, and a thorough examination of the project of a national railroad, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. To which is added a journal of the events of the celebrated emigrating expedition a? 1843; containing an account of the route from Missouri to Astoria, a table of distances, and the physical and political description of the territory, and its settlements, by a member of the recently organized Oregon legislature." In the preface the reference to the journal mentioned in the title is as follows: "The second part of the work consists of a journal, prepared from a series of letters written by a gentleman now in Oregon, who himself accompanied the celebrated emigrating expedition of 1843." After a sentence about the style of the letters he goes on to say: "The author (Wilkes) has done scarcely more to this portion than to throw it into chapters, and to strike from it such historical and geographical statistics as had been drawn from other sources and arranged in the preceding portions of the work. These letters fell into his hands after the adoption and commencement of his original Design; and adapting them to his purposes by linking them with his own manuscripts, a deal of research was saved him by the valuable and peculiar information they contributed." These statements by Wilkes concerning the author and the character of the material used by him in Part II of his book, along with indubitable internal