Presentation copy, and with the rare map
Central route to the Pacific, from the valley of the Mississippi to California: journal of the expedition of E. F. Beale, Superintendent of Indian Affairs in California, and Gwinn Harris Heap, from Missouri to California, in 1853
Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co.; London Trübner & Co., 1854. First edition, 8vo, pp. 136, 46 (ads); advertisements printed in blue on pastedowns and free endpapers; color lithograph frontispiece, 12 lithograph plates (mostly tinted); large folding map (Map of the Central Route from the Valley of the Mississippi to California) approx. 7½" x 35"original brown cloth, gilt-lettered spine; spine chipped level with textblock and with a 2" piece missing in the middle, small newspaper shadow in the gutter of pp. 62-3; text and plates relatively clean. This copy inscribed by Heap: "Robt. B. Cabeen fm. G. H. Heap Apr. 1/54." Cabeen (1811-1876) was an iron merchant and later a director of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad. The folding map was issued in only a few copies. Beale's and Heap's route took them across Colorado and Nevada. Some of the areas explored, according to Graff, are here described for the first time, and consequently this is a basic piece of Western Americana. Howes H-378; Graff 1837; Cowan, p. 273; Sabin 31175; Wagner-Camp-Becker 235. Item #57978
Price: $5,000.00
