Hearne, Samuel:

$5,750 · Offered by William Reese Company

A JOURNEY FROM PRINCE OF WALES'S FORT, IN HUDSON'S BAY, TO THE NORTHERN OCEAN. UNDERTAKEN BY ORDER OF THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY. FOR THE DISCOVERY OF COPPER MINES, A NORTH WEST PASSAGE, &c. IN THE ... First Dublin edition, in its original boards as issued, after the original London edition of the previous year. In 1769, Hearne was sent by the Hudson's Bay Company to find a northwest passage via Hudson Bay and to explore the country for copper mines which had been reported by local indigenous people. After two initial failures, Hearne reached the Coppermine River in December 1770 and followed it to its mouth on the Arctic coast. On his return he discovered Great Slave Lake. As a result of Hearne's explorations, any theory of a western exit was disproved, and much was learned and reported about the natural history and indigenous tribes of the region. Curiously, it is to the great French explorer, La Pérouse, that we owe the publication of Hearne's narrative, for it was La Pérouse who discovered the manuscript when he captured Fort Albany on Hudson Bay. After the British recaptured the fort, La Pérouse insisted on the publication of the manuscript by the Hudson's Bay Company, which resulted in this work, with its marvelous maps and plates.This copy bears the bookplate of Edwin Stanton Fickes, a civil engineer and executive of the ALCOA company, who lived near Pittsburgh and was a major collector of Western Americana. His collection is not well-known because it was sold privately

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