Lewis, Meriwether, and William Clark

2 volumes, 8vo in half-sheets (8 1/8 x 5 in.; 205 x 126 mm). Large folding engraved map after Clark by S. Harrison bound at the end of vol. 2, 5 engraved maps and plans; folding map backed with linen with some closed tears and minor marginal losses and with some foxing, usual light browning and foxing to text and other plates. Nineteenth-century half red morocco, marbled endpapers; rubbed, covers detached. 

Levi Platt, possibly Judge Levi Platt of Plattsburgh, new York (contemporary signature on each title-page)

Church 1309; Grolier/American 30; Printing and the Mind of Man 272; Streeter sale 3:1777; Wagner-Camp 13:1

see cataloguing
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First edition of "the definitive account of the most important exploration of the North American Continent" (Wagner-Camp). The Lewis and Clark expedition was funded by Congress for the purpose of establishing trading ties with the Indians of the western region. While this goal was accomplished, the explorers also greatly expanded the geographical knowledge of the West and, perhaps most important, demonstrated the feasibility of transcontinental travel.

The expedition made its way from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean and back from spring 1804 through the fall of 1806. A myriad of circumstances—including Lewis's mysterious death—conspired to delay the publication of the official narrative of their travels for eight years, during which interval several unofficial and inaccurate accounts were published. The present edition was finally brought together from Lewis and Clark's journals by Paul Allen; Thomas Jefferson (who purchased twelve sets of the History of the Expedition) supplied a prefatory life of Lewis. Many copies were evidently issued without the large map tracing Lewis and Clark's 8000-mile trek.

Clark's map of the region west of the Great Lakes was vastly superior to any previous western map: "The narrow single chain of mountains that characterized many earlier maps was replaced by a complex system of ranges, and the courses of the Missouri and Snake rivers were shown for the first time in their approximately correct position" (Schwartz & Ehrenberg, Mapping of America). The five smaller maps and plans depict specific stretches of the Missouri and Columbia rivers.