means an easy task, since the acts of both of these organizations were illegal and their surviving members could not be expected to talk very freely, even after a lapse of twenty years. After considerable urging, however, those who had custody of the records were induced in the interest of history to turn them over for Mr. Bancroft's inspection. This material was made use of in the supplemental volumes on Popular Tribunals; in the first writing of which Mr. Bancroft was himself engaged from 1875 to 1877. Like his manuscript for Central America, however, this work had to be revised before its publication ten years later.
At an early date, Mr. Bancroft tells us (Lit. Ind., 623-628), he had corresponded with the heads of governments lying within his territory. The presidents of the Mexican and Central American republics and the governors of all the states had accorded him every facility. In 1874, especially favorable letters were received from the presidents of Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, the latter appointing a special commissioner to secure and ship documents.
The great mass of California matter, at first so voluminous as to be appalling, was now in hand, and in 1878 Mr. Bancroft turned his attention to the Northwest. Upon a visit to British Columbia in that year, he obtained access to the official records of the province, took the reminiscences of many old fur traders, secured the papers of others, and had help from several who had undertaken to write a history of the country: (Lit. Ind., 534; Hist. N. W. Coast, preface, viii). It was from this data that Mr. Bancroft in the years immediately following wrote, with the aid of some other writers, the History of the Northwest Coast, and the History of British Columbia, volumes constituting the great part of the work of which he can claim the actual authorship: (See Lit. Ind., 549.)
