MANUSCRIPT: destroyed.

PUBLICATION: L (1894) 261; LL 272-273; L (1931) 239-240.

The Modoc Indians in Oregon at this time were resisting the efforts of the government to place them on a reservation. The Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin was lost in 1847. Mrs. Alfred Norcross was "Aunt Olivia." The quoted line in the first paragraph is from Wordsworth's Elegiac Stanzas (see letter no. 315).