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Show PREFACE TO VOLUMES XXVI- XXVII These two volumes are devoted to reprints of Edmund Flagg's The Far West ( New York, 1838), and Father Pierre Jean de Smet's Letters and Sketches, with a Narrative of a Year's Residence among the Indian Tribes of the Rocky Mountains ( Philadelphia, 1843). Flagg's two- volume work occupies all of our volume xxvi and the first part of volume xxvii, the remaining portion of the latter being given to De Smet's book. Edmund Flagg was prominent among early American prose writers, and also ranked high among our minor poets. A descendant of the Thomas Flagg who came to Boston from England, in 1637, Edmund was born November 24, 1815, at Wescasset, Maine. Being graduated with distinction from Bowdoin College in 1835, m ^ e s a m e Yesx he went with his mother and sister Lucy to Louisville, Kentucky. Here, in a private school, he taught the classics to a group of boys, and contributed articles to the Louisville Journal, a paper with which he was intermittently connected, either as editorial writer or correspondent, until 1861. The summer and autumn of 1836 found Flagg travelling in Missouri and Illinois, and writing for the Journal the letters which were later revised and enlarged to form The Far West, herein reprinted. Tarrying at St Louis in the autumn of 1836, our author began the study of law, and the following year was admitted to the bar; but in 1838 he returned to newspaper life, taking charge for a time of the St Louis Commercial Bulletin. During the winter of 1838- 39 he assisted George D. Prentice, founder of the |