The Rocky Mountains: or, Scenes, Incidents, and Adventures in the Far West; Digested from the Journal of Captain B.L.E. Bonneville, of the Army of the United States, and Illustrated from Various Other Sources (Two-volume set)

Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1837. First American edition. Hardcover. Good. Two volume set. 248pp; 248pp. Duodecimo [19.5 cm] in navy blue cloth with paper spine labels. Folding map at front of each volume. Most of Volume I spine label lacking, rubbing and wear to boards; paper label with ink name on front pastdown of Vol. I, front hinges of both volumes cracked (but holding), 2" tear to Vol. I map, short tears to Vol. II map. Dampstains to title page and upper margins of Vol. I (descending into text on the last few pages), light foxing throughout. Early and important western exploration with maps. Bonneville was one of the first American men to explore and map the interior west. Posing as a fur trader, and with the help of Jacob Astor, he spent nearly three years in the wilds of the Western United States. From Green River to the Great Salt Lake and onto Walla Walla. This work also includes the first account of trapping over the Sierra Nevada to California by Joe Walker. Bonneville's expedition would become a stepping stone for the later explorations of Fremont, Stansbury, Wilkes and others. Hiram Chittenden wrote of Bonneville in his work 'American Fur Trade' "The one really valuable result of Captain Bonneville' s expedition, so far as he alone is concerned, was his two maps of the Western country." These two maps represent some of the earliest Western United States maps. Wagner/Camp 67:3. Wheat 423 & 424. Howes 5262.