[Lewis, Meriwether, and William Clark]:

$9,500 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

THE TRAVELS OF CAPTS. LEWIS & CLARKE [sic], BY ORDER OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES, PERFORMED IN THE YEARS 1804, 1805, & 1806, BEING UPWARDS OF THREE THOUSAND MILES, FROM ST. LOUIS, BY WAY ... First of the so-called "Apocrypha" editions of Lewis and Clark. In response to the growing curiosity of the public regarding the findings of Lewis and Clark and the delay in publication of the "authorized account" of their expedition, this compilation of bits and pieces from already published works appeared (culled from Gass, Clark, Mackenzie, Carver, and Jefferson's Message... of 1806), misleading the reader into believing it was the account sanctioned by the government and containing all the information gathered during the journey. Despite its hodge-podge nature, it provided most of the world with its first detailed account of the Lewis and Clark expedition. It further contains five plates, purporting to be of Native Americans. One of these is knocked off from the frontispiece of Bartram's Travels...; the others have no earlier appearance that we can trace. Despite being titled "The Travels of Capts. Lewis & Clarke," nearly the whole of the text is dedicated to descriptions of different indigenous tribes and their customs.The present copy also includes the very rare folding map, which Wheat notes as "the earliest published map with legends stemming from Lewis and Clark." Howes calls this the "counterfeit" edition, and Sabin states that, according to Paltsits, it is "the earli

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