Francis Parkman 213 



has brought us into such close and familiar con- 

 tact with human life in such ancient stages of its 

 progress. In Parkman's great book we have a 

 record of vanished conditions such as hardly ex- 

 ists anywhere else in literature. 



I say his great book, using the singular num- 

 ber ; for, with the exception of that breezy bit of 

 autobiography, " The Oregon Trail," all Park- 

 man's books are the closely related volumes of a 

 single comprehensive work. From the adventures 

 of " The Pioneers of France " a consecutive story 

 is developed through " The Jesuits in North Amer- 

 ica" and "The Discovery of the Great West." 

 In "The Old Eegime in Canada" it is continued 

 with a masterly analysis of French methods of 

 colonization in this their greatest colony, and then 

 from "Frontenac and New France under Louis 

 XIV." we are led through "A Half-Century of 

 Conflict " to the grand climax in the volumes on 

 " Montcalm and Wolfe," after which " The Con- 

 spiracy of Pontiac " brings the long narrative to 

 a noble and brilliant close. In the first volume 

 we see the men of the Stone Age at that brief 

 moment when they were disposed to adore the 

 bearded newcomers as Children of the Sun ; in the 

 last we read the bloody story of their last and most 

 desperate concerted effort to loosen the iron grasp 



