"ECONOMIC BEGINNINGS OF THE FAR WEST" *
A REVIEW
Miss Coman has in this two-volume work "rounded up" the essential elements in the records of the white man's beginnings in all that part of our country lying to the west of the Missis- sippi River. The story is brought down to the Civil War period. Her achievement consists in revealing the main threads in each narrative of exploration, colonization and settlement and in suggesting the basis upon which all may be wrought into a great dramatic whole. An expansive field, a long roll of world-famous characters and a period stretching through three centuries are staged. The first scene opens with almost transco'ntinental marches by Coronado and De Soto bent on conquest and confiscation of the treasures of supposed cities of the far interior. This was in the early part of the sixteenth century, and it was the middle of the nineteenth before the struggle was over and this last unoccupied imperial domain of the temperate zone was relinquished to the youngest con- testant the latest to enter the lists for it. Nor does the action lag from the beginning to the end. Spanish conquistadores and Franciscan monks move to the north into New Mexico and Texas and up the Pacific Coast to San Francisco Bay. Spanish navigators penetrate to 54 40' in search of the straits of Anian. English buccaneers round Cape Horn and prey upon Spanish cities and commerce and set up national standards on our western coast, claiming the whole region as a New Albion. Russian enterprise directed from St. Petersburg, and first led by the dauntless Bering, comes down the coast and occupies for decades a post just north of the Golden Gate. In the meantime France, represented by such empire builders as La Salle and the Verenderyes, with followings of missionaries and fur traders, establish lines of posts and extend explorations from the Great Lakes to the mouth of the Mississippi and to the Rocky
- Economic Beginnings of the Far West. How We Won the Land Beyond the
Mississippi. By Katharine Coman. Volumes I and II. Illustrated. New York: Macmillan, 1912.
