MIGHTY MOUNTAIN

I found this easier going than the recent Archie Binns' novels, and it should prove easy selling. Historical background (period, the opening up of the North-west, conflict between squatter rights and homesteaders) and setting (Puget Sound region, territory of Washington) are of definite interest but are subordinated to the story and the characters. A youth out of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, sails around the Horn with a trading vessel, and then leaves ship when his uncle intrigues him with stories of homesteading possibilities on Puget Sound. It is a story of frontier life, of matrimony closely linked with the land promises, of white man breaking faith with Indians and precipitating wars where there had been amity. It is not a pretty picture of the government policies, nor of their application in the hands of ignorant officials. I liked the book better than The Laurels Are Cut Down; it is less original than Lightship; but it should have a definite appeal to those who like early American background material and regional stuff.