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Preface.   Vii

original arrangement of the work, but am now obliged to deviate from it, for the contents have outgrown the system of classification I first adopted. Before I could interpolate the new matter prepared for this Edition, I found it necessary to recast the last one, by cutting it into pieces, sorting it into fresh paragraphs and thoroughly revising the writing-disentangling here and consolidating there. The present Edition will consequently be found more conveniently arranged than those that preceded it, and, at the same time, I trust the copiousness of its Index will enable persons to find with readiness any passage they had remarked in a former Edition, and to which they may desire again to refer.

I am still most thankful to strangers as well as to friends for contributions of hints or corrections, having been indebted to many a previously unknown correspondent for valuable information. I beg that such communications may be addressed to me, care of my publisher, Mr. Murray, 50, Albemarle Street, London.

P.S.-A reviewer of my Third Edition accused me of copying largely from an American book, called `The Prairie Traveller,' by, the then, Capt. Randolph B. Marcy. I therefore think it well to remark that the first Edition of that work was published in 1859 (Harper and Brothers, New York;-by authority of the American War Department), and that the passages in question are all taken from my second Edition published in 1856; part of them are copies of what I had myself written, the rest are reprints of my quotations, as though the Author of the ' Prairie Traveller' had himself originally selected them.

I take this opportunity of remarking that though I have been indebted for information to a very large number of authors and