The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1918-07-14
r are Books
Discovery of the Important Manuscript Jour
mails Of Two Early Fur Traders Who First
Explored a Central Route to the Pacific

IRON the days Of Lewis and Clark there
i has been a steady demand for material
giving unknown facts Of America west of
the Mississippi. Book men are constantly
on the lookout for manuscript journals left
BY the travellers who explored those re-
gions and examine with the greatest care
every bit of manuscript that comes to them.
A Valuable Find.
There can now be recorded the very re-
cent discovery of a series of manuscript
papers which are of the first importance,
being the travels of two men who are ap-
parently unknown as explorers and who trav-
ersed a section that was only touched in
places by those who had preceded them.
The men were William H. Ashley and Jedc-
diah Strong Smith, and they were engaged
in the fur trade. 1t is to them, it appears,
that we owe the first exploration of central
Interior Basin and Colorado River, as far
as Green River and Great Salt Lake.
Smith appears to have taken up the work
where Ashley dropped it, going on to Cali
fornia by way of the Colorado and the Mo
jave Desert and returning through what is
now Nevada on his way back to Salt Lake.
He later made another journey to Califor-
MIA, and he was the first white man to
traverse the entire length of that State and
then to press onward into Oregon as far
as the Columbia.
Two Explorers Records.
These events all occurred between 1922
ard 1899. Ashley describes his trip to and
down Green River in 1886; Smith relates
the incidents of his journey through Cali
fornia and up to Fort Vancouver. Ashley
made his trip in midwinter, making the
water journey in rude boats with great
peril as he went through the canyons of
Green River. He seems to have left no
point Of scientific interest or Importance IN
noted, so that his work might be of value
to those who should follow later. He plotted
his course thoroughly and thus made the
investigation of geographers easy.
These daring men had with them as q
clerk one Harrison G. Rogers, who also
kept journal and gives a more or less
comprehensive report of all these journeys,
taking note of the daily incidents without
any reference to the scientific side of the
expeditions 1t fell to him to describe the
meetings with the various Indians many of
which were exciting, and the meetings with
such whites as the travellers encountered.
These important manuscripts have lain
unnoticed among the mass of material &C.
cumulated by the Missouri State Historical
Society. By accident they came under the
eve Of Prof. II. C. Dale of the University Of
Wyoming. He set about arranging them for
publication, and this task has Just been
finished
In a long Introductory chapter Prof Dale
gives a complete history of the fur trade,
taken mainly from manuscript sources; re-
views the explorations Of the British, French
and American traders, which, in a way,
supplement the narratives of Ashley and
Smith. The book will give the earliest
known account of Yellowstone Park, ante
dating any other by fifteen years. A bib
biography has been compiled.
"Harmon's Journal"
THE Sun may also note the discovery Of
another journal here in New York by
gentleman who is an ardent collector of
everything respecting the West and the HUI
son s Bay country-the original manuscript
journal kept by Daniel Williams Harmon
during the nineteen years he was employed
by the Hudson s Bay Company as their
agent between the forty seventh and
ffty-eighth degrees of north latitude, ex-
tending from Montreal nearly to the Pa
cifc Ocean
In 1920 there was issued from a New
England press 4 book which purported to be
Harmcn's journal, edited by Rev. Mr..
Haskell This book was of such eharac-
ter that it has long been felt that Haskell
sacrificed much of genuine interest which
Harmon had written in order to make space
for religious tergversations.
When the new owner came into posses
sion of the manuscript copy of the journal
he at once made a careful comparison Of
that with the printed book, and speedily