Mr. Parkman did not at once achieve popularity, but his "Pioneers of France" received cordial appreciation and even aroused enthusiasm among writers and critics. The tributes to this and subsequent works are not surpassed if equalled by those accorded to any previous writer. "In vigor and pointedness of description, Mr. Parkman may be counted superior to Irving," said the New York Tribune. The London Athenæum accorded him "a place alongside of the greatest historians whose works are English classics." The late George William Curtis referred to his theme as "a subject which Mr. Parkman has made as much his own as Motley the 'Dutch Republic,' or Macaulay the 'English Revolution.'" "He has taken," said The Spectator, "musty records, skeletons of facts, dry bones of barest history, and breathed on them that they might live." His books have been pronounced "as fascinating as any of Scott's novels;" he has been termed "Easily the first of living historians;" his descriptions of Indian life have been described as unsurpassed, and his sketches of lake and forest scenery praised as "of exquisite beauty." "Pioneers of France in the New World" was followed in 1867 by "The Jesuits in North America." "Few passages of history," said the author, "are more striking than those which record the efforts of the earlier French Jesuits to convert the Indians. Full as they are of dramatic and philosophic interest, bearing strongly on the political destinies of America, and closely involved with the history of its native population, it is wonderful that they have been left so long in obscurity." The historian, in this as in all his works, endeavored to write with the utmost fairness, basing all his conclusions on authorities and documents. In the preface to a later work, "A Half Century of Conflict," he says: "The statements of secondary writers have been accepted only when found to conform to the evidence of contemporaries whose writings have been sifted with the greatest care. As extremists on each side have charged me with favoring the other, I hope I have been unfair to neither." The third volume in the series, "La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West," appeared in 1869, and embodied the exploits and adventures of the first European explorers of the Valley of the Mississippi, the efforts of the French to secure the whole interior of the Continent, the attempt of La Salle to find a westward passage to India, his colony on the Illinois, his scheme of invading Mexico, his contest with the Jesuits, and his assassination by his own followers. The leading personages in this remarkable narrative are the intrepid Cavelier de la Salle, Henri de Tonty, his lieutenant, Hennepin, the historian of the expedition, Joliet and Marquette, the explorers of the Mississippi, etc. This volume is of especial value and interest to the people of the Northwest, giving, as it does, the early history of their own homes.