A book story, or why I love books:
I've been researching a particular historical trail that figured in the history of the gold rush. Searching around on the internet, I found a map depicting this particular trail and an adjacent one just to the north. The map was published in 1860 by the US Government, but I could find no link to the source document. I printed off the map for my archives, but it isn't clear enough to be very useful.
Fast forward a couple of weeks: I am walking down the street in Olympia to reconnect with my wife after putting her purchase in the trunk of our car. I see a large old book in the window of an antique store. I go in and ask to see the book. The man lets me see the book but not the folded up maps attached to it, which he says will be damaged by handling.
The book is Volume XII of Reports of explorations and surveys, to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean: I look at the price and gulp: $1250.
I want the book, but it is out of my budget by about $1200. I take down the citation in my notebook and thank the man.
Back on the internet, I find the complete volume available for free, minus the maps, but including black and white renditions of the colored drawings in the original.
I print off about 200 pages of this book, practically slavering over what is written there.
I found the Washington State Library on the internet and email my query to see if they have the book. They do. I reserve a day for myself and go to the library, which is only about 20 minutes away from where I'm staying. They bring the book out and let me look at it at a special place they have for looking at rare books, which is in full view of watchful eyes.
There in the back of the book is a folded map. I delicately unfold the map to its full size, which is about 30 inches by 20.
It's the map with the trail I am researching. I photograph the entire map with my digital camera. I gratefully return the book to the librarian.
Volume XII of the complete set of Explorations of Surveys was written by Isaac I. Stevens and his expeditionary team which includes many famous personages, the names of whom are now affixed to geographic features of the Northwest: Tinkham Peak, The Mullan Road, and so forth.
Isaac Stevens became the first governor of Washington Territory, and the county that I live in is named after him.
Stevens conducted his amazing surveys from 1853 to 1855 under orders from Jefferson Davis, who was at the time Secretary of War. Jefferson Davis later became President of the Confederate States of America and Stevens became a general in the Union Army. He was killed at the Battle of Chantilly.
I go to the microfilm library, where I find the orders Jefferson Davis gave Stevens to conduct the Railroad survey, written in his own hand, and the complete set of correspondence between the two of them, plus correspondence written by Stevens' engineers and military officers, members of his expedition, all written in their own hand.
I print off much of the entire reel of microfilm for my own library. The library charges me fifteen cents a page, and I burn through $20 worth on their little plastic card that I keep refilling on the machine that takes my money.
These men ARE GIANTS in American history. As I leafed through the report and the letters in longhand, I was reverently aware that everything I read was obtained at great difficulty, at great risk to their own lives, great discomfort, near starvation, on foot and on horseback, and in severe weather. I was looking at the nineteenth century equivalent of landing on the moon in our own century.
I go back the next day and look at microfilm of some newspapers of the 1860s, where I find a short article beseeching Congress to pay General Stevens' widow a little more than the $1500 of his salary for completing the railroad surveys of the Northwest in recognition of the great difficulty that he overcame.
Why do I love books? Why is this book discussion important to me?
Without books, I would be impoverished indeed. None of my personal adventure as I have just described it would have been possible. |
