library left by Hubert Howe Bancroft in California. That historian of tremendous energy but of elastic conscience came up through the Oregon country with his wife and his secretary and took away great quantities of pioneer manuscript and printed material, with an ingratiating promise of return, which never happened. Still, that was back in the seventies when pioneer memories were thicker than ears to hear. With the woods full of aged men reminiscing about old times and boring the new generation interested in the future, the attention of this polished visitor from San Francisco was flattering. Thus some of the things the covetous hands got hold of may not otherwise have been preserved. Anyway, he missed the Charles Applegate stories, or later let them get out of his own tenacious possession.
The other book is Passages in the Life of Ruth Rover, published in Portland in 1854 and harshly panned in a review in the Oregonian. There used to be a copy in the Oregon Historical Society Library but it was lost several years ago. It also is not in the Bancroft Library and there is no other trace of an existing copy.
From what is known about the Charles Applegate sketches and about the natural story talent of the author, they would no doubt make interesting reading. From what "Squibs", the savage Oregonian reviewer, said about Ruth Rover, it would satisfy a curiosity rather than an intrinsic literary interest.
Peter Skene Ogden's Traits of American Indian Life and Character, published in London in 1853, which makes six books for this early productive decade, has been described in a previous chapter.
