AMONG THE MOST IMPORTANT EARLY 19TH-CENTURY WESTERN EXPLORATIONS: JAMES’ ROCKY MOUNTAINS

JAMES, Edwin. Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, Performed in the Years 1819, 1820 by Order of the Hon. J.C. Calhoun, Secretary of War, Under the Command of Maj. S.H. Long. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1823. Three volumes. Octavo, contemporary three-quarter black morocco, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, raised bands, marbled boards and edges.

First English edition, issued the same year as the first American edition, of this account—along with the accounts of Lewis and Clark and Pike, widely acclaimed one of the three key narratives of early Western exploring expeditions. Illustrated with one large folding map, eight full-page aquatints (three hand-colored—the English edition is the first with hand-colored plates) and one folding topographic elevation.

Stephen Long’s landmark expedition, more ambitious than any previous American expedition to the Trans-Mississippi West, resulted in a number of historical firsts. James was Colorado’s first botanist; the first to ascend a 14,000-foot peak in North America (James’ Peak, later renamed Pike’s Peak); and the first to relate a journey up the Platte and down the Canadian and Arkansas rivers from above Fort Smith. His findings supplemented the explorations of Pike and Lewis and Clark in the areas of geography, botany, natural history, and the customs, manners, and rites of a number of Indian tribes. “One of the best books on the Mississippi Valley and its inhabitants” (Stevens 1741). “This map was… copied, even to the style of lettering of ‘Great American Desert,’ by numerous cartographers. Lewis and Clark’s published map of 1814 and this map (and to a lesser extent that of Pike) were the progenitors of an entire class of maps of the American Transmississippi West” (Wheat II:80). First published earlier the same year in Philadelphia. This first English edition combines “into one map the ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ sections of the engraved map as published in the American edition” (Wheat). It is also the first edition with hand-colored plates. With half titles in Volumes II and III. Ewan, Rocky Mountain Naturalists, 16. Streeter 1784. Howes J41[b]. Sabin 35683. Armorial bookplates. Bibliographic annotation to front pastedown of Volume I.

Occasional light foxing and offsetting, as usual. Minor abrasions to boards. A very nearly fine set in handsome contemporary bindings.