ly Times in California_,
Los Angeles, 1881; reprinted, but OP. In this book and in _On the Old
West Coast_, Bell caught the lift and spiritedness of life-hungry men.

BIDWELL, JOHN (1819-1900). _Echoes of the Past_, Chico, California
(about 1900). Bidwell got to California several years before gold was
discovered. He became foremost citizen and entertained scientists,
writers, scholars, and artists at his ranch home. His brief accounts
of the trip across the plains and of pioneer society in California are
graphic, charming, telling. The book goes in and out of print but is not
likely to die.

BILLINGTON, RAY ALLEN. _Westward Expansion: A History of the American
Frontier_, Macmillan, New York, 1949. This Alpha to Omega treatise
concludes with a seventy-five-page, double-column, fine-print
bibliography which not only lists but comments upon most books and
articles of any consequence that have been published on frontier
history.

BOURKE, JOHN G. _On the Border with Crook_, New York, 1891. Now
published by Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio. Bourke had an
eager, disciplined mind, at once scientific and humanistic; he had
imagination and loyalty to truth and justice; he had a strong body
and joyed in frontier exploring. He was a captain in the army but had
nothing of the littleness of the army mind exhibited by Generals Nelson
Miles and O. O. Howard in their egocentric reminiscences. I rank his
book as the meatiest and richest of all books dealing with campaigns
against Indians. In its amplitude it includes the whole frontier.
General George Crook was a wise, generous, and noble man, but his
_Autobiography_ (edited by Martin F. Schmitt; University of Oklahoma
Press) lacks that power in writing necessary to turn the best subject
on earth into a good book and capable also, as Darwin demonstrated, of
turning earthworms into a classic.

BURNHAM, FREDERICK RUSSELL. _Scouting on Two Continents_, New York,
1926; reprinted, Los Angeles, 1942. A brave book of enthralling
interest. The technique of scouting in the Apache Country is illuminated
by that of South Africa in the Boer War. Hunting for life, Major Burnham
carried it with him. OP.

DEVOTO, BERNARD. _The Year of Decision 1846_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston,
1943. Critical interpretation as well as depiction. The Mexican War,
New Mexico, California, Mountain Men, etc. DeVoto's _Across the Wide
Missouri_ is wider in spirit, less bound to political complexities. See
under