pointed in this volume. The author has made a thorough search of source materials, as well as of secondary works, and has produced an accurate, scholarly account of the origin, development, and services of the express and stagecoach companies in California before the civil war.
A brief introductory chapter furnishes a picture of the economic situation in California in the decade or more just preceding the gold rush. Then follows a more lengthy discussion of the gold rush and inland transportation, including the beginnings of the express business by various individuals and firms. The third chapter deals with the consolidated companies, principally Adams and Company and Wells, Fargo and Company, from 1849 to 1855. A similar survey of the origin and early development of the stagecoach business, including the establishment of the California Stage Company, is contained in the fourth chapter. After this comes a description of the events and consequences of the panic year 1855 in California. The supremacy of Wells, Fargo and Company and of the California Stage Company in their respective fields, the expansion of the stagecoach business, and a brief account of the stage connections of California with the east, are the main topics in the sixth chapter. A short resume, a bibliography, and an index complete the book.
The average reader would no doubt be glad to have a more definite description than is here given of what stagecoach travel was really like the length of time it took to go from place to place, the hotels and eating places, the most famous "whips" and their characteristics, and other "human interest" aspects. A chapter on wagon freighting would have rounded out the story of transportation before the coming of the railroads. However, the reviewer has no reason to complain of the limitations which the author placed upon himself. Dr. Winther has made an important contribution to the early history of the Pacfic coast.
The Beaver, June, 1936, contains articles of interest to northwestern readers. "The Journeys of Sir George Simpson, 1820-1860," accompanied by a map showing the routes traveled, were compiled by Mr. R. H. G. Leveson Gower, archivist of the Hudson's Bay Company, from Simpson's letters and journals in the archives of the company. Mr. Leveson Gower also lists briefly the voyages for discovery of the northwest passage in the early part of the 18th century in fulfillment of one of the objects of the Hudson's Bay Company. "54° 40′ or Fight," is the title of an article by H. S. Patterson on the Warre and Vavasour expedition to Oregon in 1845. The author quotes fully the first report, from Fort Garry, dated June 10, 1845, which has not been published before. The article is illustrated with some of the sketches which Warre published in London in 1846, including Fort Vancouver and an American Village, the title the artist gave to his picture of Oregon City. The Oregon Historical Society is fortunate in possessing a copy of the rare portfolio of sketches. The full report of Warre and Vavasour on Oregon is printed in the Oregon Historical Quarterly, volume X. Mr. F. G. Roe discusses further the subject of extermination of the buffalo in western Canada, which began in the Canadian Historical Review, March–June, 1934.
A recently discovered document in the Archivo General de la Nacion, Mexico, discloses that Martinez temporarily abandoned Nootka Sound in 1789 on an order from Florez, viceroy of New Spain, as there were then not enough vessels at San Blas to supply the expedition. The
