Sketches in North America and the Oregon Territory, By Captain H.
Item #74292
WARRE, General Sir Henry James. Sketches in North America and the Oregon Territory, By Captain H. Warre, (A.D.C. to the late Commander of the Forces). [London]: Dickinson & Co., [1848]. Folio (21 x 14 1/4 inches). Letterpress title (verso blank), pp.[1-]5 letterpress text Sketch of the Journey. 20 hand-coloured lithographed views on 16 sheets, by Dickinson and Co., after Warre, 1 lithographic map, hand-coloured in outline with routes marked in red and blue. Very minor foxing to a few plates. Contemporary purple cloth, rebacked and retipped with dark purple morocco, spine with raised bands in seven compartments, ruled in gilt and blind on either side of each band, lettered in gilt in the second compartment. Provenance: William Rathbone (booklabel); Lester E. Bauer (Parke-Bernet, 3 December 1958, lot 508); Frank T. Siebert (Sotheby's New York, 28 October 1999, lot 860). First edition, original hand-coloured issue of a work which contains the "only western color plates comparable in beauty to those by Bodmer" (Howes). An important record of the American west before it was touched by western civilization. Captain Warre and Lieutenant Mervin Vavasour, of the Royal Engineers, left Montreal on 5 May 1845. They initially accompanied Sir George Simpson, governor of the Hudson Bay Company, who was making a tour of inspection of the Company's outposts. On reaching Fort Garry (plate 1) at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, they teamed up with Peter Skene Ogden (1790-1854), a Company Chief Trader who had vast experience of the West, the Columbia and the Rockies in particular. Travelling mainly on horseback, the journey from the fort over the Rockies to Fort Colville took them from 16 June to 12 August. This section of the journey is illustrated by five plates. They left Fort Colville in boats and made their way down the Columbia River arriving at the Pacific on 25 August (3 plates). They then spent the winter exploring Oregon Territory and the Pacific Coast, visiting the Company settlement on the Willamette River (2 plates), exploring the Columbia River (1 plate), visiting Fort George on the Columbia River (2 plates), Vancouver Island and Fort Vancouver (1 plate), Cowelitz River and Puget's Sound. Once the weather started to improve, Warre and Vavasour and a party of about 30 began their westward journey on 25 March 1846, again by.
Price: $150,000.00