Wilkes requires over five thousand words to reach the account of the above incident. Burnett's narrative uses less than four hundred. The above excerpts might raise the suspicion that the letters that Wilkes represents he is using are not the Burnett letters. The transcript given below will, I think, dispel all doubts:
There is perhaps no flesh more delicious to the traveler's appetite than buffalo meat, particularly that cut from a fat young buffalo cow; and it has the peculiar advantage of allowing you to eat as much as you please without either surfeit or oppression. I shall never forget the exquisite meal I made on the evening of the first of June. I had been out hunting all day, was very weary, and as hungry as a whole wilderness of tigers. Out of compassion for my complete fatigue, Mrs. Burnett cooked six large slices from a fat young buffalo for my supper. My extravagant hunger induced me to believe when I first saw the formidable array served up, that I could readily dispose of three of them. I did eat three of them, but I found they were but the prologue for the fourth, the fourth to the fifth, and that to the sixth, and I verily believe that had the line stretched out the crack of doom I should have staked my fate upon another and another collop of the prairie king. This story hardly does me credit, but the worst is to come, for two hours afterward I shared the supper of Dumberton, and on passing Captain Gant's tent on my way home I accepted an invitation from him to a bit of broiled tongue; yet even after this, I went to bed with an unsatisfied appetite. I am no cormorant, though I must admit I acted very much like one on this occasion. My only consolation and excuse, however, is that I was not a single instance of voracity in my attacks upon broiled buffalo meat.
This story should be compared with the latter part of the third letter. Comments are quite unnecessary.
Wilkes' tactics in rendering Burnett's letters are not merely those of one who would conceal authorship but those of one who deliberately perverts history. He not only changes the names of emigrants, but is careful to represent that Burnett is not the author of his text. On page 65, he says: "I should not omit to mention here, that I was also introduced this afternoon to Mr. Peter H. Burnett, who was subsequently made captain of the expedition." He not only garbles, but deliberately falsifies. On
