2 volumes + atlas. [4], 503; [6], 442, xcviii pp. Atas with iv pp. title & list of plates + 2 double-page engraved maps, 1 double-page engraved vertical section, 7 engraved plates after drawings by S. Seymour, & 1 hand-colored plate of an Indian pictograph on a buffalo robe. Text volumes are 8vo, 21.6x13.5 cm (8½x5¼"), later library cloth; atlas is 4to, 30.5x24 cm (12x9¼"), original cloth-backed boards, printed paper cover label. First Edition.
First edition of this account of an important expedition up the Platte and then across the watershed to the Arkansas, thought by Streeter to be the first published account of a journey along that route. The expedition consisted of Major Long, the commander; Captain J.R. Bell, official recorder; Thomas Say, zoologist; Edwin James, botanist, geologist, and surgeon; Titian R. Peale, assistant naturalist; Samuel Seymour, landscape painter; a corporal with six army privates, and assorted interpreters, hunters, and baggage men. James based this compilation on his own records, the brief geological notes of Major Long, and the early journals of Thomas Say. The important map of the "Country drained by the Mississippi" by Stephen Long, on two sheets (eastern and western sections) is discussed by Wheat at length, both the manuscript and printed versions, crediting it with largely creating the "Great American Desert" myth, and noting it as "more of a 'mother map' than was that of Pike. It was copied, even to the style of lettering of 'Great American Desert,' by numerous cartographers. Lewis and Clark's published map of 1814 and this map (and to a lesser extent that of Pike) were the progenitors of an entire class of maps of the American Transmississippi West." The text volumes are dated 1823, the atlas 1822. Formerly in the Wilmington Institute Free Library, with old markings, bookplates, spines marked with a white "S", and the plates and maps with perforated stamps (but the latter not egregious at first look).
Condition:
Test volumes with darkening to covers and also to text, reinforcements along gutters when rebound; atlas with wear and some chipping to covers, some mostly marginal foxing occasional offset; good condition overall, sold as is.