(#166574) The seven wonders of the new world. In one volume. With illustrations. By Rev. J. K. Peck, A.M., of Wyoming Conference. JONATHAN KENYON PECK.

The seven wonders of the new world. In one volume. With illustrations. By Rev. J. K. Peck, A.M., of Wyoming Conference. New York: Phillips & Hunt. Cincinnati: Cranston & Stowe, 1885. 18.2x12 cm, pp. [5] 6-320, flyleaves at front and rear, 8 woodcut illustrations, original decorated brown cloth, stamped in black and gold, rear panel ruled in blind, gray endpapers. First edition. Peck's seven wonders of the new world are nature's wonders, not man-made ancient structures: Niagara Falls, Yellowstone National Park, Mammoth Cave, The Grand Canyon and Colorado's Garden of the Gods, the Giant Trees of California (the Sequoia gigantea of the Sierra Nevada), the Natural Bridge of Virginia, and Yosemite Valley. The chapters on the Sequoia gigantea and the Yosemite Valley comprise pages [205]-244 and [284]-320. Peck's descriptions of the Big Trees and Yosemite Valley are almost entirely historical and descriptive with a very limited narrative of his own experiences and observations. Instead he relies almost entirely on the accounts of others and includes extensive extracts from those writers, including liberal quotations from J. H. Redsecker's rare privately printed Across the Continent: Letters Written to the Church Advocate, during the Summer of 1879 (Lebanon, Pa., n.d. [1879?]). He also quotes James D. Smillie, who wrote and illustrated the chapter, "The Yosemite," in Picturesque America: Or, the Land We Live In, edited by William Cullen Bryant (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1872), and has this to say about Smillie's drawing of Mirror Lake: "An engraving of this lake, in 'Appleton's Picturesque America,' is one of the finest pictures in existence, a perfect gem, which one never tires of beholding" (p. 313). Jonathan Kenyon Peck (1824-1899), a noted preacher in the Wyoming Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1853-1892, traveled to California as a participant in the 1883 Pacific Institute Excursion. The first Pacific Institute Excursion took place in 1879. For more on the P. I. E. s and Yosemite see See Donald G. Kohrs, Chautauqua: The Nature Study Movement in Pacific Grove, California (2013), unpublished draft (Revised 07/29/2014). 1898 Christmas gift inscription on the front free endpaper. A very good copy. (#166574).

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