86 pp. in a larger journal, with most of the other pages blank + 5 pp. vocabulary of Chinook jargon. In ink, except for last 1½ pp., which are in pencil. 10x7¾, half leather & boards.
Important journal of the first U.S. government sponsored voyage to Alaska following its purchase from Russia in 1867. Peveril Meigs was not yet 20 years old when his cousin, Captain Richard Warsam Meade, invited him to sign on as a clerk aboard the U.S.S. Saginaw, which had been ordered to sail under Meade’s command from Mare Island in San Francisco Bay northward to Alaska, to investigate the vast new territory. There are only two personal narratives of that seminal voyage, Captain Meade’s Journal, housed in the Library of Congress, and the present journal, kept by Peveril Meigs. The well-written journal, by a young but well-educated New Englander, provides rich detail on the land and people of Alaska, with many insights into native customs and habits. Following a brief account of the trip across the isthmus to San Francisco, Meigs describes his brief stay in “Frisco,” then the journey up the coast. They stop for a time in Victoria, Vancouver Island, then on to Fort Wrangel in “Russian America,” Sitka (where they spend Christmas,” and beyond. There are ink sketches of a Russian stove and other items on the front endpapers, and two ink sketches in the diary, one of them illustrating a hunting camp, with the adjacent text reading “Perry went hunting alone this morning and the Siwash (Indian) and I went together. We started as soon as it was quite light, about nine o’clock, and after a long tramp over hills and through valleys, following the different trails, returned quite crestfallen, with one unfortunate duck that we shot just before entering camp. We found Perry busy cutting up a small deer…” Later he describes the destruction of an Indian village suspected of sheltering several “murderers”: “We landed just to the right of the village, picketed the soldiers between the houses and the woods and then set to work with coal and alcohol and ‘von leetle match’ and soon had one of the shanties in flames. Shickshiney, a Tyhee’s daughter, was allowed to retain her house, two canoes and some articles that belonged to her, but all the rest, (5 houses and 6 canoes) were entirely destroyed. These houses are about 30 feet square and built of planks about 3 inches thick, hewn out of logs, so that when we had them all lit it made quite a fine bonfire. We heard the Indians in the woods yell several times, and their dogs would bark every now and then, but they were afraid to molest us. I felt sorry for Shickshiny. She is quite a pretty klootchman and I believe has been the mistress of nearly every officer that has visited here…” Accompanied by a typescript of the journal, produced sometime after 1920 and containing a three-page introduction by Meigs’ son, Peveril Meigs, Jr. Also including are two vintage photographs, a carte-de-visite of Meigs at age 21, wearing his captain’s clerk uniform, taken by Bradley & Rulofson in San Francisco in 1869 on the return voyage (this creased with wear, mounting tape on verso), and a cabinet card of Capt. Richard Worsam Meade, taken by Lamson, Portland, ME.