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Show 1836- 1849] Preface 13 try. His descriptions of the Ohio, Mississippi, and Illinois rivers are still among the best in print, particularly from the artistic standpoint. His account of the steamboat traffic is valuable for the history of navigation on the Western rivers, and shows vividly the obstacles which still confronted merchants of that time. Chapters xi, xii, and xiii, dealing with St Louis and its immediate vicinity, are the most detailed in our series, while the descriptions of St. Charles and the Illinois towns through which Flagg passed, are excellent. The modern reader cannot but wish that Flagg had devoted less space to his youthful philosophizing, but the atmosphere is at least wholesome. Unlike Harris, whose criticism of Western society was keen and acrid, Flagg was a man of broad sympathies, possessing an insight into human nature remarkable for so youthful a writer - for he was but twenty years of age at the time of his travels, and twenty-two when the book was published. Although mildly reproving the old French settlers for their lack of enterprise, he fully appreciates their domestic virtues, and gives a faithful picture of these pleasure- loving, contented, unprogressive people. His description of the once thriving villages of Kaskaskia, Prairie du Rocher, and Cahokia, are valuable historically, as showing the decay settling upon the French civilization after a few years of American occupation. Our author's interview with the Mormon convert, his conversations with early French and American settlers, his accounts of political meetings, his anecdotes illustrating Western curiosity, and particularly his carefully- recounted local traditions, throw much light on the beliefs, manners, and customs of the Western people of his time. The Far West is thus not only a graphic and often forceful description of the interesting region through which the author travelled, but a sympathetic synopsis of its local annals, affording much varied |