Fremont, John C.: Preuss, Charles:

$2,500 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

GEOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR UPON UPPER CALIFORNIA, IN ILLUSTRATION OF HIS MAP OF OREGON AND CALIFORNIA. A monumental work in the history of California and the mapping of the trans-Mississippi West, featuring the outstanding map drawn by Charles Preuss.The text consists of Fremont's description of the third expedition, undertaken in 1845-46 but unpublished until 1848, with charts of astronomical observations. Fremont, after a long series of conflicts with Phil Kearny that eventually saw him court-martialed and expelled from the military, was never actually required to deliver a formal report of his Third Expedition into upper California and Oregon, which happened just prior to the "Conquest of California" and ensuing unpleasantness. Instead, Fremont wrote this unofficial GEOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR, the value of which was immediately seen when it was printed as a public document by the Senate in June 1848.Realistically, however, the entire text is in service of the map, which Wheat calls the "one great general map of 1848," and which includes much "distinctly new information." "The route of the expedition is shown beginning at Pueblo, continuing up the Arkansas, over to Piney Creek west of Middle Park, on West-north-west to White River, and down that stream to the Green. The country to this point was cartographically almost new, and Edward M. Kern, as topographer, brought it into the purview of organized knowledge" - Wheat. The map was drawn by Charles Preuss, and lithographed by E. Weber in

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