The Forest Arcadia of Northern New York Embracing a View of Its Mineral, Agricultural, and Timber Resources. by [Coffin, Nathaniel Wheeler]

Boston: T.O. H. P. Burnham, 1864. First edition (pp. 224). Duodecima (16 cm) in brown decorative publisher’s cloth, gilt titles to spine, t.e.g. The anonymous Bostonian’s casual tour begins at Rouse’s Point, NY, situated in the northeasterly corner of the state where New York, Vermont, and Canada intersect, and carries on by rail to the west across the St. Lawrence lowlands, passing through Chateaugay, and fetches up first at Potsdam, a principal town of St. Lawrence County, that triangular slab of northern New York whose arcadian delights (as Wheeler might have said) he is most interested in exploring. Wheeler’s travels take him along river valleys into in some of the back country which climbs to the south of  Potsdam and Canton up into the Adirondacks. It is characteristic of Wheeler’s account that, in one breath, he expostulates (his word) on the beauty of the forest all around him and enthuses on the great harvests of timber to be snatched from it or foresees iron mines spread across the countryside extracting the treasures which  lie beneath the soil. It is also characteristic that when he and his camp companions are awakened from sleep by an animal call, they cannot agree whether the call is that of a bear, a fox, or a woodchuck. Only a patch on the spine, which is lightly sunned, and a catalogue annotation suggest this copy’s sojourn in the Pierce Library, Hanover, a little north of Bethel, Maine. Quite a fine looking copy of an uncommon book.