A JOURNEY FROM PRINCE OF WALES'S FORT, IN HUDSON'S BAY, TO THE NORTHERN OCEAN. UNDERTAKEN BY ORDER OF THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY. FOR THE DISCOVERY OF COPPER MINES, A NORTH WEST PASSAGE, &c. IN THE YEARS 1769, 1770, 1771, & 1772

Dublin: P. Byrne and J. Rice, 1796.. [2],l,459,[1]pp. plus five folding maps (including frontispiece map) and four folding plates. Half title. Original blue paper boards over tan paper spine, as issued, spine with contemporary manuscript title. Light wear and soiling to boards, corners bumped, chipping and minor loss of paper to spine ends. Occasional light foxing and offsetting from plates. Bookplate on front pastedown (see below), later pencil annotation to front free endpaper. A lovely copy overall, in completely unsophisticated condition. Untrimmed. In blue cloth chemise and half dark blue morocco and cloth slipcase, spine gilt. First Dublin edition, in its original boards as issued, after the original London edition of the previous year. In 1769, Hearne was sent by the Hudson's Bay Company to find a northwest passage via Hudson Bay and to explore the country for copper mines which had been reported by local indigenous people. After two initial failures, Hearne reached the Coppermine River in December 1770 and followed it to its mouth on the Arctic coast. On his return he discovered Great Slave Lake. As a result of Hearne's explorations, any theory of a western exit was disproved, and much was learned and reported about the natural history and indigenous tribes of the region. Curiously, it is to the great French explorer, La Pérouse, that we owe the publication of Hearne's narrative, for it was La Pérouse who discovered the manuscript when he captured Fort Albany on Hudson Bay. After the British recaptured the fort, La Pérouse insisted on the publication of the manuscript by the Hudson's Bay Company, which resulted in this work, with its marvelous maps and plates.

This copy bears the bookplate of Edwin Stanton Fickes, a civil engineer and executive of the ALCOA company, who lived near Pittsburgh and was a major collector of Western Americana. His collection is not well-known because it was sold privately by Americana dealer, Peter Decker, in the 1960s, and acquired by H. Richard Dietrich Jr. for his Dietrich American Foundation. It is likely Decker's note on the front free endpaper signed, "PD," and reading: "The finest copy extant. Dublin ed. is scarcer than the original."

A classic of American travel, by "the first white man to gaze on the Arctic or Frozen Ocean from the northern shores of the continent of America" (Lande), and a beautiful copy. ESTC T111224. FIELD 944. First edition: HILL 791. STREETER SALE 3652. BELL H73. SABIN 31181. TPL 445. LANDE 1120. REESE, BEST OF THE WEST 18 (note). REESE & OSBORN, STRUGGLE FOR NORTH AMERICA 14 (note). (Inventory #: WRCAM57443)