On this day (June 18) in the year 1853, the following two items appeared 
in the Illustrated News (New York): 
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                     EXCITING INCIDENT. 

   Among the Rocky Mountains, on one occasion, while J. Wesley Jones, 
Esq., with a few of his artist companions, were stopping in the rear of 
their main company for the purpose of daguerreotyping for his pantascope 
some remarkably strange rocks, a war party of Indians suddenly sprang 
from behind the rocks, and, giving a frightful yell, advanced with 
lances poised ready for battle, when the artist, with great coolness, 
turned upon them his camera, and somewhat mystically waving over the 
instrument the black clothes in which his pictures were wrapped, held 
his lighted cigar in somewhat frightful proximity to the instrument.  
The savages had heard strange stories of "thunder on wheels," which had, 
in one terrific burst, swept away whole parties of red skins.  Panic 
stricken, they paused a moment, then veered to the right with eye fixed 
upon the dreadful instrument. But the strange "mortar" followed them; 
its dangerous point ever keeping them in a direct line.  Pop!-pop!-pop! 
went a revolver from beneath the instrument.  This was but the prelude 
of the death waging storm about to burst upon them!  They could no 
longer stand this, but with a simultaneous yell broke away towards the 
rocks.  Bang!-bang! went the artist's guns after them.  Strange, 
terrific sounds were reverberated through the mountain gorges, and 
echoed back by the cavernous rocks--yells and shrieks and rumbling 
thunders.  The smoke cleared away, and the artists were alone.  No time 
was lost in rejoining the caravan; and, the danger being over, it became 
often the subject of merriment around the camp fires--Jones' charge 
among the Indians with the daguerreotype instrument! 
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(In the same issue...)

                    AUTHORS AND BOOKS.
                        ----------

   Hints on the Daguerreotype: or Plain Directions for obtaining 
Photographic Pictures by the Calotype and Energiatype; also upon 
Albumenized Paper and Glass, including a Practical Treatise on 
Photography, &c.  One volume. 16 mo.  [Philadelphia: A. Hart.]  This is 
a neatly gotten up work, by J.H. Croucher, on a subject of very great 
popular interest.  We have looked it carefully through, and find it 
replete with curious and valuable information upon the subject of every 
known process for the development of pictures by the agency of light.  
To the man of learning it must prove an acquisition, as a sound work of 
reference upon all the availabilities, discoveries, and improvements in 
the art upon which it treats, while to the amateur its practical and 
intelligible rules for securing the best effects by the chrysotype, the 
cyanotype, the chromotype, the calotype, &c., as well as by the more 
ordinary processes, must render it a perfect vade mecum.
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Posted for your enjoyment.      Gary W. Ewer       
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06-18-95