In a cabinet (bearing in its carving suggestions of the fleur-de-lis) in the rooms of the Massachusetts Historical Society, I found some of this precious material, also bequeathed by the historian. Its nature is suggested in the preface to his "Montcalm and Wolfe." "A very large amount," he says, "of unpublished material has been used in its preparation, consisting for the most part of documents copied from the archives and libraries of France and England. The papers copied for the present work ["Montcalm and Wolfe"] in France alone, exceed six thousand folio pages of manuscript, additional and supplementary to the 'Paris Documents' procured for the State of New York.... The copies made in England form ten volumes, besides many English documents consulted in the original manuscript. Great numbers of autograph letters, diaries, and other writings of persons engaged in the war have also been examined on this [_i.e._, American] side of the Atlantic." But even these were as the dry bones in the valley which Ezekiel saw, till he touched these scattered fragments with his genius. The process employed by the blind workman is described by Frothingham, one of his friends: "The manuscripts were read over to him, slowly, one by one. First the chief points were considered, then the details of the story were gone over carefully and minutely. As the reading went on, he made notes, first of essential and then of non-essential. After this he welded everything together, made the narrative completely his own, infused into it his own fire, quickened it by his own imagination, and made it as it were a living experience, so that his books read like personal reminiscences." [Footnote: "Memoirs of Francis Parkman," in "Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, 1892-4," series 2, 8:555.] In a book of Parkman memorabilia of various kinds which I found in the Harvard Library, I happened one day upon a few scraps of paper which furnish illustration of the first steps of the process--paper on which were notes made in Parkman's own hand: "Deserts covered with bones of buffalo and elk"; "No sign of man from Fort Union to Fort Mackenzie"; "White clay, cactus dried up, grasshoppers"; "Poplars,--wild roses,--gooseberries"; "prairie dogs,--heat,--aridity"; "extraordinary castellated mountains, stone walls,--etc. above Fort Union"; "in 1832 Blackfeet are said to have killed 58 whites, three years before, 80"; "Blackfeet do not eat dogs--Blackfeet Societies--beaver traps lent to Blackfeet"; "wood near Fort Clark chiefly poplar"; "fossils-- terres mauvaises"; "maize cultivated by Mandans"; "catching the war eagle"; "Mandans etc. agricultural tribes"; "wolf-pits described"; "Exceptional cold Ft. Clark"; "Wolf attacked three women;--wooden carts no iron"; "Barren Mts. little dells with water,--gooseberries, strawberries, currants, very few trees, mad river."