Travels in America
Item #83830
ASHE, Thomas. Travels in America, Performed in 1806, for the Purpose of Exploring the Rivers Alleghany, Monongahela, Ohio, and Mississippi, and Ascertaining the Produce and Condition of Their Banks and Vicinity. London: Richard Phillips, 1809. 316, [4, index]pp. Contemporary mottled calf, expertly rebacked antique gilt calf spine, leather spine label. Light foxing mostly affecting index leaves, else very good. Howes A-352. Clark 134. Sabin 2180. The one-volume edition, issued a year after the original three-volume edition. Ashe (1770-1835) was an Irish travel writer, novelist, soldier, paleontologist, and occasional thief. When he became friends with Sir John Johnson, the Indian Superintendent in Canada, he was invited to visit Montreal and study fossil remains, and his journey thence to Ohio, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia via flatboat on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers is chronicled in this book. It is one of the first travelogues written by a foreigner to comment specifically on the American inhabitants of the region. According to Clark, "his entire career was checkered with intrigue, misrepresentation, and fraud. Enlivened by misrepresentation and exaggeration, Ashe's account is interesting and highly readable." The book was critiqued at the time for its falsehoods, and the offense many took at Ashe's unabashed hatred for Americans only added to the anti-British sentiment present in the country leading to the War of 1812.
Price: $450.00