with "Sierra," snowy. Thus, "the
snowy ridge of mountains and craggy rocks," or, to express the meaning
more clearly in English, the snowy serrated mountain-range. Bret
Harte's capitalization of "Sierras" may be safely challenged. The lines
are from his poem, Dickens in Camp.

The Buttes mentioned by Shirley are the Marysville Buttes. "Butte" is
French, and descriptive, and French trappers bestowed the name.

Shirley sometimes uses an adverb instead of an adjective. Thus on page
332, speaking of a tame frog on the bar at a rancho, she says,--

You cannot think how comically [comic] it looked hopping about the
bar, quite as much at home as a tame squirrel would have been.

An old San Francisco printer once heard a newspaperman say that this
little incident furnished the suggestion to Mark Twain for his Jumping
Frog of Calaveras, but, unfortunately, regarded the remark as of no
more importance than much other gossip current among printers and
newspapermen.

Shirley, like many another writer, used marks of quotation improperly,
when the language of the author cited was altered or adapted. Worse
than this are many instances of gross misquotation. In the former case,
the quotation-marks were deleted; in the latter, accuracy was the aim.

On page 79 quotation-marks are deleted, the language used being
adapted, thus, "clothe themselves with curses as with a garment."
Compare Psalms cix, 18, "He clothed himself with cursing like as with
his garment."

On page 101 a correction is made; thus, "As thy day is, so shall thy
strength be" (Deut. xxxiii, 25). In the Letters this read, "As thy
days, so," etc.

On page 268 quotation-marks are deleted, as the language used is
adapted, and in a strict sense is also inaccurate; thus, "The _woman_
tempted me, and I did eat." Compare Genesis iii, 12, 13.

12. And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she
gave me of the tree, and _I_ did eat.

13. And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou
hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did
eat.

Blunders and mistakes of all sorts might be set out, but it is not
deemed advisable to pursue this matter any further. It is, however,
necessary to say something further of THE PIONEER itself, and the
paper-cover title of the May, 1855, number is reprinted here, with an
outline drawing of the crude woodcut vignette printed in the original.
It was impossible to