Astoria, Or Anecdotes of an Enterprise Beyond the Rocky Mountains

Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, and Blanchard, 1836. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. First state (BAL 10148). Two volumes in original plum cloth, with folding map as frontispiece to Volume II. Spines sunned but legibles, some chipping to cloth at spine ends, just a bit of scattered foxing, otherwise quite sound and clean. Two ownership signatures on each front pastedown: "John Henshaw 1837" and "J. Andrew Henshaw 1854." Housed in a simple cloth clamshell box. The classic work on John Jacob Astor's Pacific Coast fur-trading operation, "based in part on a revised transcript of the Journal of Robert Stuart and the journals of Wilson Price Hunt and Ramsay (truncated) Crooks, which were for a time in the possession of Astor" (Wagner-Camp 61). Field 760: "The narrative is crowded with incidents of Indian subtlety or ferocity, as well as with descriptions of the manners and peculiarities of the fierce lords of the great plains, and the vaster mountains.... It is fortunate for the memory of the great millionaire Astor, that his attempt to establish the first American settlement on the Pacific Coast found such an historian." The Map is titled "Sketch of the Routes of Hunt and Stuart." Wheat (Transmisisippi West II, p 157-58): writes "This map makes no pretense at overall geographical coverage but for what it purports to be it is an excellent map...and an important milestone of western mapping. It shows the 'Wallamut' cut to size, 'Lake Bonneville Salt water' (Great Salt Lake) with the Bear River quite well delineated, and farther west it indicates what must be the Humboldt River and the large lakes just east of the Sierra Nevada, reminiscent of Ogden." Howes I-81; Streeter Sale VI, 3347; Graff 2158. (Inventory #: 22698)