376 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



We have reason to anticipate a fullness of information, wholly new 

 to the Gentile world, when the volume devoted to Utah is reached. 

 For not only has Mr. Bancroft all the documents and all the material 

 for the history of the Mormons which is accessible to any one else, but 

 he is the exclusive possessor of that which is more valuable than all 

 this, and which has never seen the light. The ruling men of the Mor- 

 mon Church have given him the privilege of examining their archives, 

 containing documents going back to the beginning of their movement. 

 We have the Gentile story in superfluity and in unpleasant satiety ; 

 Mr. Bancroft purposes to give us the Mormon side in addition un- 

 colored, and told as a part of the res gesta, and that is what the world 

 wants to know. 



The task which Mr. Bancroft undertook in the preparation of so 

 comprehensive a work as this was one of unusual magnitude, and 

 might well have discouraged a less eai-nest man. It certainly required 

 unusual powers of application and painstaking labor to give unity and 

 harmony to so large a plan ; to reduce such a chaos of material as the 

 history has to be built up out of to manageable shape, and to organize 

 the work so that all should be done intelligently, consistently, and dis- 

 criminatingly. But the plan is substantially executed, and one half of 

 the work it demanded is done and in the possession of the public, 

 while the rest of it is, we are told, in so advanced a stage of forward- 

 ness that its completion no longer depends on the prolongation of the 

 life of the author. 



The scheme contemplated the presentation in a systematized, read- 

 able, and plainly intelligible form, both in general view and in all its 

 details and with all its changes of scene, of the history, so far as it is 

 known or has been reported, of the tribes and states of the Pacific slope 

 of the North American Continent from the Isthmus of Darien to Behr- 

 ing Strait. When we consider what these states are ; what elements 

 have entered into their composition ; what vicissitudes and revolutions 

 they have gone through during the four hundred years they have been 

 known to white men ; and how all the material is colored in all dis- 

 cordant hues by ignorance, partisan prejudice, or political malice pre- 

 pense — it would seem almost a hopeless task to obtain comprehension 

 even of a small part of the confused whole. Add to this, that hun- 

 dreds of native tribes, having a vast geographical range and living in 

 the most various conditions of pursuit, wealth, and civilization, had to 

 be dealt with, and that what was to be learned about them had to be 

 gathered and sifted from a great accumulation of printed and manu- 

 script accounts, true and false, guessed, imaginary, and real, and from 

 myths and traditions going back to an unknown antiquity, here ob- 

 scure, and there inextricably entangled in and modifying one another — 

 and we conceive a task calling for no slight powers of mental organi- 

 zation. Forty-two thousand is the number of books and manuscripts 

 Mr. Bancroft has levied upon for his great undertaking ! It took six 



