Material upon which to base the remaining fourth was collected in the same way as previously, Mr. Bancroft visiting the country to be written up, ascertaining the nature and location of the materials, collecting what could be had conveniently, and then leaving the further ingathering in the hands of agents. A visit to Mexico in 1883 furnished him with some material on social conditions in that country which he tells us was utilized in the last volume of the Mexican history: (Lit. Ind., 701). More extensive collections remained to be made in the regions farther north.
After the completion of the two volumes on Oregon, Mrs. Victor's attention was next directed to the volume on Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming. In the carrying on of this work, a greater number of suggestions as to manner of treatment were made by Mr. Bancroft, we may believe, than was usual in the preparation of a volume, for the reasons that it was hurried more for publication than earlier works, that it was written under his immediate direction, and that he himself collected and forwarded material from the field as required. The record of the progress of the work, as it occurs in Mr. Bancroft's letters to the writer of the volume, is of unusual interest in that the methods followed, though in some ways exceptional, may perhaps be taken as fairly typical of those employed by Mr. Bancroft in the preparation of the later volumes of the series which he immediately supervised.
In August, 1884, shortly before the completion of the second volume of the History of Oregon, Mr. Bancroft went to Salt Lake City, where he left with Franklin D. Richards a memorandum to guide him in extracting material on the Mormons in Nevada which, he said, would be about the first material needed. Pending the arrival of this, on September 11th, he advised Mrs. Victor to familiarize herself with the history of Wyoming and
