History, at its best, is a collection of biographies of the world's great leaders, and is best studied in biography. To be of value, it must be accurate. Scarcely has any great leader escaped from the stings of history, but it is well to know and believe that time will correct the wrong. The case of Dr. Whitman is peculiar in the fact that all his contemporaries united in doing him honor, save and except one, Bishop Brouillet. The men who knew the value of his work and his eminent services, such as Gray, Reed, Simpson, Barrows, and Parkman; the correspondence of Spalding, Lovejoy, Eells, and the Lees, have made the record clear. It has been reserved for modern historians of that class who have just discovered the "Mistakes of Moses," and that Shakespeare never wrote Shakespeare's plays, to indulge in sneers and scoffs and to falsify the record. It is not the intention to attempt to reply to all these, but we shall notice the fallacies of two or three. In a recent edition of the history of the Lewis and Clarke Expedition, published by F. P. Harper, New York, and edited by Dr. Elliott Coues, a most entertaining volume, and yet wholly misleading as to the final issue which resulted in Oregon becoming a part of the Republic, Dr. Coues in his dedication of the volume says: "To the people of the great West: Jefferson gave you the country. Lewis and Clarke showed you the way. The rest is your own course of empire. Honor the statesman who foresaw your West. Honor the brave men who first saw your West. May the memory of their glorious achievement be your precious heritage. Accept from my heart this undying record of the beginning of all your greatness. ELLIOTT COUES." All honor to Jefferson, the far-sighted statesman; and a like honor to the courageous explorers, Lewis and Clarke; but the writer of history should be true to facts. Lewis and Clarke were not "The first men who saw your West." They were not the discoverers of Oregon. Old Captain Gray did that a dozen years prior to the visit of Lewis and Clarke. A writer of true history should not have blinded his eyes to that fact on his dedicatory page. Captain Gray sailed into the mouth of the Columbia River on his good ship Columbia, from Boston, on May 7th, 1792. The great river was named for his vessel. This, together with the title gained by the Louisiana purchase in 1803, and the treaty with Spain and Mexico, more fully recited in another chapter, made the claim of the United States to ownership in the soil of Oregon.