596 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1890. 



But the question of too high coloriug is often one of personal equa- 

 tion only. One of our greatest modern writers thus defends himself 

 against the charge of exaggeration : 



" What is exaggeration to one class of minds and perception is plain truth to another. 

 That which is commonly called long-sight, perceives in a prospect innumerable fea- 

 tures and hearings non-existent to a short-sighted person. I sometimes ask myself 

 whether there may occasionally he a difference of this kind between some writers 

 and some readers ; whether it is always the writer who colors highly or whether it is 

 now and then the reader whose eye for color is a little dull." 



Half a century ago the country west of the Mississippi was a verita- 

 ble terra incognita. No one appreciated the magnificent distances of 

 that region. The Eocky Mountains were supposed to be somewhat in 

 sight of the falls of St. Anthony. I remember once seeing in a novel 

 written by an author who, I believe, is still living, an account in which 

 the hero is represented as ascending to the roof of a one-story struc- 

 ture on the banks of the Illinois Eiver, and looking admiringly over an 

 extensive landscape which was " bounded on the west by the distant 

 outline of the Eocky Mountains." In other words, this gentleman of 

 telescopic eye was able to take in the entire states of Missouri and 

 Kansas and half of Colorado at a single glance. With such ideas pre- 

 vailing among the learned, how could Catlin, having journeyed some 

 three thousand miles up the Missouri, come back with his finger in his 

 mouth and say he had not had a glimpse of the Eocky Mountains % jSTo 

 one would believe him. He must at least pretend he had seen them, 

 and so by an ingenious verbal fabrication,* but without the slightest 

 direct falsehood, he makes possible the inference that he saw their 

 snowy summits during his journey up the Missouri Eiver in 1832. So 

 well does he succeed that a receut student of Catlin, in a published map, 

 terminates the itinerary of 1832 some hundreds of miles west of the 

 mouth of the Yellowstone, which latter was really his farthest west 

 during the year in question. 



I have not time now to explain in full my reasons for knowing that 

 Catlin did not see the Eocky Mountains in 1832, as he leads many to 

 suppose he has done ; but if there is any one in the audience conversant 

 with Catlin's works, who wishes to have the proofs on this point, I am 

 at his service. Not only did Catlin not see the " Rockies " in 1832, but 

 I have serious doubt if he saw the main chain at any time during the 

 eightyears or more during which he was engaged in making this Gallery. 

 What he may have seen and sketched after 1852, when the Gallery 

 passed into other hands, I do not know; but then the California gold 

 fields had been discovered, the overland route was trodden as clear as a 

 thrashing-floor, and the visit to the Eocky Mountains had become a 

 common achievement. One of the reasons for my doubts is the evi- 

 dence of the collection itself. Examine all these pictures carefully by 



*.See " Illustrations of the Manners, Customs and Condition of the North American 

 Indians," by Geo. Catlin, vol. 1, Loudon, 1H66, pp, (> - J-G5. The conversation with 

 "Batiste " here given ia fictitious, 



