REVIEWS
AND RECENT
PUBLICATIONS
The Overland Diary of James A. Pritchard, from Kentucky t0 California in 1849, with a Biography of Captain James A. Pritchard by Hugh Pritchard Williamson. Edited by Dale L. Morgan. (Denver, Old West Publishing Company, 1959, 221 pp., $15.00) In the century and more since the first overland parties began to cross the Great Plains in an organized way, hundreds of trail diaries have made their appearance out of attics and basements. This is another such account. According to its editor, at least 132 diaries of travel to California, Oregon, and Utah, by way of South Pass, are known to exist for the year 1849 alone. He presents these, alongside this diary, in a chronologically-arranged chart and with an alphabetical list. Such diaries are still the best keys to an understanding of the vitality of life on the frontier. Yet there is great unevenness in these diaries. While multitudes of emigrants who crossed the plains kept journals and diaries, many simply wrote prosaic and routine accounts concerning the length of each day's journey, hardships endured en route, and the travails of camp life for the uninitiated. Only an occasional diary illuminates unexpected aspects of life on die trail. Few diarists grasped the flavor of the wilderness through which they passed and the sense of history inherent in their movement toward the gold fields of California. Few had the ability to translate even dramatic
