The Greater Northwest

THE GREATER NORTHWEST.* Of the three handsome volumes just issued by Mr. Francis P. Harper, en-titled New Light on the Early History of the Greater Northwest, the first two contain the diary of Alexander Henry, a fur trader in the service of the Northwest Company, together with a digest of the manuscripts of David Thompson, astronomer, geographer, explorer, and discoverer, whose work was done first for the Hudson Bay Company and after-ward for its energetic and hated younger rival. The third volume, thinner than its predecessors, is filled up with maps, and an index of most scholarly and mi-nute comprehensiveness. The material is edited by Dr. Elliott Coues, with a critical and explanatory commentary, so copious and so painstaking that the whole work, as it stands, is a monument to the editor no less than to the author. It is issued in a limited edition of eleven hundred numbered copies.

As a contribution to the history of the Northwest Henry's journal is invaluable. Other explorers in the same field have left more or less complete records of their achievements. The work before us does not cause any great reversal of accepted conclusions, but corroborates and immensely enlarges our store of knowledge on the subject. The journal covers the years from 1799 to 1814, and a tract of country extend-ing from Lake Superior to the Pacific, front the southern borders of Wisconsin and Oregon to the northern limits of Saskatchewan and Alberta. It is writ-ten with all the freshness and veracity of immediate observation, the author's custom having obviously been to post up his diary at the end of each day's travelling or trafficking It is written also with the bold fidelity to fact of the unimaginative man who sees no further than before his feet, and is not concerned to make deductions. For the annalist this is the ideal temper ; and the histo-rian who has to draw upon these pages for material will gratefully recognise their simplicity.

It is at first a matter of wonder that the author of such an important work as this should have so long remained unknown. The reason is found in the fact that Henry was by no means versed in the arts of composition, and left his manuscripts in such a shape that no publisher could undertake to print them as they stood. The source of the volumes before us is a manuscript copy made by one George Coventry, about 1824, and now lying in the library of Parliament at Ottawa. It consists of more than sixteen hundred pages of legal cap, and bears every evidence of being a faithful transcript of Henry's own note-books. The style is so stilted, cumbersome, weighted with circumlocution and repetition that readers would have been hopelessly repelled by it. This mine of information, therefore, had to wait for an editor with the req-uisite patience and requisite knowledge for its development, as well as for a publisher ready to take the risk of so costly a venture. In Dr. Coues the old fur-trading diarist has found at last the editor whom he needed for the establishment of his fame. His writings, under tactful revision and condensation, have been made extremely readable, without sacrifice of the author's personality ; and Dr. Coues, from the fulness of his scholarship in this field, has brought out the full value of Henry's material by presenting it in its relation to the works of other authorities, such as McKenzie, Franchin, Ross, and Samuel Hearne.

It. is not for his contributions to our geographical knowledge that Henry is significant. He followed, for the most part, beaten trails. But none of the chroniclers of his time could rival his knowledge of the Northwest Indian tribes. He knew their habits, customs, and points of view ; and his unshrink-ing pen describes them with a merciless lack of extenuation. The picture is not generally a romantic or attractive one, but it hears the stamp of truth ; and the editor has done wisely to remember that in a book of this sort, which makes its appeal to the student rather than to the family circle, expurgation would have been an impertinence. It would have seriously impaired the accuracy of a picture which perpetuates vanished con-ditions.

The whole of Volume I. is taken up with the Red River region, which in-cludes a strikingly picturesque account of a tour among the Mandans, in 18o6. The force and directness of the narra-tive are at times startling in their effect. The incidents stand out in unforgettable relief. The second volume contains Part II., dealing with the Saskatchewan country, and Part III., describing the Columbia. Both accounts are of the highest ethnographical value, and should be studied by all who are concerned in those Indian problems for whose solu-tion our race is unquestionably responsi-ble. Henry shows a remarkable skill, throughout the whole work, in differentiating the numerous tribes that came under his observation. It was late in 18,3 that he arrived at the mouth of the Columbia, at the Astoria settlement, which Irving's work of that name has immortalised. Had Irving been fortu-nate enough to have access to Henry's papers his romance, without sacrifice of literary quality, might have been made more like history and less like fiction. Here, on May 22d, 1814, Henry was drowned in the waters of the Columbia while on a canoe expedition from Fort George.

The contributions of David Thompson to this work are of great extent and value, but not incorporated with the main text. Embodied in the foot-notes they serve the purposes of comparison and elucidation. The manuscripts of Thompson's notes, covering the whole of his active career, are preserved in the archives of the Crown Lands Depart-ment of Ontario, at Toronto. Only those documents, however, which cover approximately the period treated in Henry's diaries are made use of by Dr. Coues. Consisting as they do of tables, reports, bare scientific data, astronomi-cal calculations and meteorological rec-ords, they could have no interest to the reading public and no place in book-form except when presented as Dr. Coues has presented them. In this con-nection their value and significance are made to appear. The journeyings of the two men often coincided both in time and place. They were continually coming at least within rumour of each other. But they betrayed so little affec-tion for each other's companionship that it seems the very irony of fate that their names and their work should at last come to be so inextricably bound up to-gether as they are in the present volumes.

Charles G. D. Roberts.

*New Light on the Early History of the Greater Northwest. The Manuscript Journals of Alexander Henry, Fur Trader of the North-west Company, and of David Thompson, Official Geographer and Explorer of the same Com-pany, 1799-1814. Exploration and Adventure among the Indians on the Red, Saskatchewan, Missouri, and Columbia Rivers. Edited with Copious Critical Commentary by Elliott Coues. New York : Francis P. Harper.