1865. She has often told how, upon her first arrival in this state, she recognized in the type both of the sturdy pioneers of Oregon and of their institutions something entirely new to her experience, and at once determined to make a close study of Oregon. As she became acquainted with many of the leading men of the state, and learned more and more about it, she determined to write its history, and began to collect material for that purpose. In doing this she performed a service of inestimable value to the state, since our state builders were then nearly all alive, and facts concerning the beginnings of the state were well known to them, which, had it not been for Mrs. Victor's efforts, would have been lost to posterity.
Her first book on the history of Oregon was "The River of the West," a biography of Joseph L. Meek, which was published in 1870. Many middle-aged Oregonians tell what a delight came to them when in boyhood and girlhood days they read the stories of Rocky Mountain adventures of the old trapper Meek, as recited by this woman of culture and literary training, who herself had taken so great an interest in them. The book was thumbed and passed from hand to hand as long as it would hold together, and to-day scarcely a copy is to be obtained in the Northwest. Mrs. Victor before her death prepared a second edition for the press, and it is to be sincerely hoped that the work will soon be republished. For, intensely interesting as the "River of the West" is, the chief value of the work does not lie in this fact, but rather in its value to the historian. Meek belonged to the age before the pioneers. It was the trapper and trader who explored the wilds of the West and opened up the way for the immigrant. That historians are just beginning to work up the history of the fur trade in the far West, the number of books in that particular field published within a year will testify; and such men, for instance, as Capt. H. M.
