SCENES IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS, AND IN OREGON, CALIFORNIA, NEW MEXICO, TEXAS, AND THE GRAND PRAIRIES; OR NOTES BY THE WAY, DURING AN EXCURSION OF THREE YEARS...By a New Englander

by [Sage, Rufus B.]:

Price: $10,000.00
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Philadelphia. 1846.. 303pp. plus folding map. Contemporary blindstamped black cloth, gilt- lettered spine, expertly rebacked. Minor wear to extremities, neatly repaired. Slightly cocked. Moderate spotting in text and on map. Map with short tear and old tape repair. Overall very good. One of the most important overland narratives. Sage set out from Westport in the summer of 1841 with a fur caravan, later visiting New Mexico, witnessing the disaster of the Snively expedition, and joining the end of the 1843 Fremont expedition. He returned to Ohio in time to take a vigorous if futile role in the election of 1844, supporting Henry Clay. He wrote this book in 1845. The story of the publication of this work and its subsequent sale is told by LeRoy Hafen in the introduction to the most scholarly edition of Sage, issued in two volumes by the Arthur H. Clark Co. in 1956. According to Hafen, the publishers of the original edition felt the addition of a map would cost too much, and it was only at the author's insistence that a map was printed and sold with the book, at a higher rate. The map, based mainly on the 1845 Fremont map, is usually not found with the book. It is "one of the earliest to depict the finally- determined Oregon boundary...one of the earliest attempts to show on a map the evermore-heavily traveled emigrant road to California" (Wheat). It adds interesting notes on the country and locations of fur trading establishments. Sage was certainly one of the most literate and acute observers of the West in the period immediately before the events of 1846. COWAN, pp.548-49. HOWES S16, "b." RAINES, p.181. MINTZ 402. SABIN 74892. WAGNER-CAMP 123. WHEAT TRANSMISSISSIPPI 527. GRAFF, 50 TEXAS RARITIES 30. GRAFF 3633. STREETER SALE 3049. MATTES 68. RITTENHOUSE 502. WHEAT GOLD REGIONS 30.

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