ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOLUME XXVI
| Map of Oregon; drawn by H. J. Kelley, 1830 | [24] |
| Facsimile of title-page to Vol. I of Flagg's The Far West | [25] |
PREFACE TO VOLUMES XXVI-XXVII
These two volumes are devoted to reprints of Edmund Flagg's The Far West (New York, 1838), and Father Pierre Jean de Smet's Letters and Sketches, with a Narrative of a Year's Residence among the Indian Tribes of the Rocky Mountains (Philadelphia, 1843). Flagg's two-volume work occupies all of our volume xxvi and the first part of volume xxvii, the remaining portion of the latter being given to De Smet's book.
Edmund Flagg was prominent among early American prose writers, and also ranked high among our minor poets. A descendant of the Thomas Flagg who came to Boston from England, in 1637, Edmund was born November 24, 1815, at Wescasset, Maine. Being graduated with distinction from Bowdoin College in 1835, in the same year he went with his mother and sister Lucy to Louisville, Kentucky. Here, in a private school, he taught the classics to a group of boys, and contributed articles to the Louisville Journal, a paper with which he was intermittently connected, either as editorial writer or correspondent, until 1861.