Mr. Williams' previous work had been good preparation for this still more important undertaking. A lifelong student and newspaper editor, he is not only an experienced writer, but also an enthusiast for the Northwest, to which he has given two notable books of his own, "The Mountain That Was 'God'" and "The Guardians of the Columbia." No other volumes so well and so briefly tell so much of the scenery, physical geography and Indian lore of our North Pacific Wonderland. It was natural that he should see in Winthrop's graphic story the foundation for an artistic book, which would, by reason of its added Winthrop material and its editor's notes and illustrations, be largely a new work. Mr. Williams has restored in a sub title Winthrop's own name for the book, "Klalam and Klickatat." Two survivors of that early period, Gen. Henry C. Hodges, who, as a lieutenant of the Fourth U. S. Infantry, was adjutant of Capt. McClellan's railway reconnaissance in the Cascades, and Col. E. Jay Allen, builder of the famous "Citizens' Road," which Winthrop describes with much humor, contribute interesting recollections of the brilliant young adventurer, and of events in which he and they played a part in that eventful summer. In the spring of 1853, Theodore Winthrop, then only twenty-five, came to the Pacific Coast from Panama. Five years earlier he had been graduated from Yale, with honors in languages and history. Not of robust constitution, he sought health by life in the open air. Two years were passed in the south of Europe, mainly in travel on foot amid the Alps and in the Mediterranean countries. Study of the scenery and historical monuments of those lands developed a naturally poetic and imaginative mind, and prepared him to appreciate the vast panorama that spread before him as he traveled from the Isthmus to California, thence, after a brief stay in San Francisco, up the coast by steamer to the Columbia, overland from there to Puget Sound, and finally across the Cascades and through our great "Inland Empire," homeward bound, to Salt Lake and Fort Laramie. This journey of half a year, then almost unprecedented, is fully recorded in his letters and journals which Mr. Williams has recovered for us.