Note 1 — EDITOR'S PREFACE 1

Timothy Flint (1780-1840) was a native of Reading, Massachusetts. Graduated from Harvard College (1800), he became a Congregational minister, and in 1815 went as a missionary to the Far West. Until 1822 his headquarters were at St. Charles, Missouri; in that year he descended the Mississippi in a flatboat and settled in Louisiana, conducting a seminary on Lake Pontchartrain. Ill health compelled him to return to the North (1825), and thereafter he gave his attention to literature. For three years he edited the Western Review at Cincinnati; but later, removing to New York (1833), conducted the Knickerbocker Magazine. In addition to publishing a number of romances and biographies of Western life, he was the author of two well-known books on the West: Recollections of the Last Ten Years Passed in the Valley of the Mississippi (1826), and Condensed History and Geography of the Western States (1828).—Ed.