In such an entourage of events the author correctly conceives of the motive that is primary in this culminative course of events. A lower race is to be dispossessed by a higher, though Wyeth's plans contemplated advantage from the Indians' retaining their native employments, and the missionaries vainly hoped by a summary procedure to elevate them from lowest barbarism to civilization. Doctor McLoughlin holds the key to the situation, at least as to the immediate outcome. As representative of the fur trading monopoly, his interests are linked with the interests of the Indians in remaining in undisturbed possession of their imperial domains. It would have been so easy to have hustled back home the first forerunners of the great immigrations, and, if this had not deterred others from coming on in larger numbers, these in turn, utterly without resources after their long marches, could easily have been thrown into consternation and wrought havoc with by the chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company. The issues in this great drama of the Pacific Northwest turn then, first, upon the qualities of heart and character of the Indians that came under the influence of Lee, Whitman, and Spalding. Will they have the faith and fortitude to sacrifice a world in which they are the leaders for a possibly better world in which leadership is with the white man? Secondly, the outcome of this second movement of the Americans on to Oregon lies with Doctor McLoughlin. Will the depth of his humanity suffice to rescue, shelter, nourish and shield year after year those who would have perished but for his intervention and whose survival is bound to result in the appearance of invading hosts who will wrest the sceptre from him? Mrs. Dye has thrilling issues and two real heroes, Whitman and McLoughlin, in this epoch of Oregon history, and she makes the most of them. The secret of her remarkable success in making the characters and conditions of that time live again lay in her getting the confidence of the principal surviving actors of that period and securing from them the fullest impress of the traditions of stirring times, with all the halo that half-a-century would naturally invest them with. Through these sources she attained an understanding of the actors and spirit of the times so intimate that her pretension to supply the words used on all important occasions does not become a mockery, but through this dramatizing the author attains the unique element in her success. In this role her inimitable power of vivid representation, through successions of pictures, has its best application.