The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 27, July 1923 - April, 1924 Page: 78
344 p. : maps ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
I find the book disappointing, for the content does not come up
to the hopeful promise of its title. With a chance to look down
from a mountain peak, the author was content to let himself gaze
from a hill. There is penetrating observation in the book, both
vigorous and piquant phrasing, a clever, terse, often illuminating
style of sentence making. Of the taking of Astoria by the British
he remarks dryly that it was done "with an appropriate carouse"
(p. 24); and of the service of the American trappers to their coun-
try, he says that it, "however incidental to their pursuit of happi-
ness, nevertheless has been immense" (p. 67).
Felicity of style, however, cannot redeem the lost opportunity
of presenting a piece of work to be expected from the title. In
these days it is bad historiography to ignore that the American
emigration to the Pacific Coast in the years 1838 to 1846 was pre-
cisely what the name implies, a Pacific Coast movement. Every-
one admits that the Oregon country was the main objective dur-
ing those years and indeed the two following; that the heaviest
emigration was to that territory north of 42 degrees and south of
49 degrees. That is just as true as the fact that treads so closely
and familiarly, even tritely, on its heels, that after 1848 the cur-
rent was largely the other way. Nevertheless, the historical cur-
Tent flowed alike throughout the entire region, and it has been
an unfortunate tradition that attempts to separate a part from
the whole, much as one turns on first the hot water faucet and
then the cold.
In his book Dr. Bell has done what is a common practice, for
certain purposes, in the movies; he has taken a picture with only
half a film. What the other, coincident, half should have received
is blank. The American march to the Pacific Coast is one story,
much of it was one route. The same fur traders and trappers
that did the valiant service Bell accords to them in the Rockies,
did the same deeds, opened like trails, ended their lives in the
same way in the Sierras. A diplomatic battle of keenest skill was
played with the future of the entire coast as the issue. It would
have made a brilliant chapter, this unwritten synthesis of Amer-
ican diplomacy, as it concerned the highway to the Pacific Coast
for those years 1838 to 1846. French travelers, on what shrewd
purpose bent we cannot yet say fully, were openly claiming in the
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 27, July 1923 - April, 1924, periodical, 1924; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101086/m1/84/: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.