18 The Wilson Bulletin — No. 66. 



stead of censure, for the risk taken in bringing out so expen- 

 sive a work. An error in judgment might have speedily in- 

 volved them in ruin. Indeed, Ord is the authority for the 

 statement that they found the expenses burdensome long be- 

 fore the work was completed. It was not the dread of a pub- 

 lisher's wrath that led Wilson to brave the frost and discom- 

 forts of a tramp to the Niagara; to risk a passage in a frail 

 boat down the flooded Ohio, despite of the ice, snags and saw- 

 yers ; or to struggle resolutely onward through the pestilential 

 quagmires of the Mississippi region. He knew that his ambi- 

 tion was laudable and was simply bound to succeed, cost what 

 it might. 



In the matter of subscriptions, Ord deprecates the fact that 

 while the little city of New Orleans contributed sixty sub- 

 scribers in seventeen days, Philadelphia, " of all her literati, 

 her men of benevolence, taste and riches, seventy only, 

 to the period of the author's decease, had the liberality to coun- 

 tenance him by a subscription." Perhaps it has always been 

 characteristic of the " City of Brotherly Love " to depreciate 

 home products, but condemnation in this instance may be soft- 

 ened in consideration of the easy access to the work at the 

 public libraries and that the local market was actually glutted 

 with the projects of talented adventurers. On the whole, Penn- 

 sylvania did nobly in furnishing more than one-quarter of the 

 subscriptions, and with New York and Louisiana, over one- 

 half of the total. The South, containing a greater proportion 

 of the leisurely class, gave substantial encouragement freely ; 

 and with the two northern states already mentioned, assured 

 the completion of the work. Intellectual New England, ac- 

 cording to the subscription list, is accredited with just twenty- 

 four subscriptions ! Of the total of four hundred and fifty- 

 nine subscriptions, the greater number were obtained in the 

 few large cities from New York southward. 



In a pioneer work of this nature, colored illustrations were 

 deemed not only advisable, but for many reasons considered 

 absolutely indispensable. Had the entire seventy-six plates 

 been engraved by Alexander Lawson instead of the fifty plates 

 bearing his signature, the result would not only have been 



