Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/363

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Authorship of Bancroft's History.
353

nished her in a correspondence with Mr. A. B. Roberts and Mr. Allen, formerly of the Hudson Bay Company. (This correspondence is now in the possession of Mr. E. H. Kilham, of Portland, Or.) The work as written made more than two volumes, and condensation was necessary. A chapter on geology and mining was omitted by Mr. Bancroft; the disposal of the manuscript on the "Oregon Question" has already been noticed, and matter on the San Juan boundary dispute and the Modoc war was also incorporated in other volumes. Mrs. Victor considered the first volume of the History of Oregon as perfect as it could be made at the time. With certain features of the second she was not so well satisfied, the most prominent being the omission of the history of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, necessitated by Mr. Bancroft's failure to secure material, and certain changes made by him in her manuscript on Indian Wars in Southern Oregon in such a way as to throw blame upon the settlers (Mrs. Victor in [Salem] Oregon Statesman February 24, 1895). It is worthy of note that her history is the first to pass over the political results attributed to Whitman's ride by previous writers. The sheets of the Oregon history before they were issued were submitted to Judge Deady for his approval.

In the half of the History of British Columbia which he wrote, Mr. Bancroft utilized some of the material that he had collected in person. Bates prepared a fourth of the manuscript, and Nemos and Bowman together the remainder, Nemos writing some of the chapters and revising others.

The History of Alaska afforded Mr. Bancroft an opportunity for further research in the field of early voyages. He is credited with half of the volume, Bates with a third, Nemos a little, and Petroff about a fourth. Nemos places