(#166968) NEW TRACKS IN NORTH AMERICA. A JOURNAL OF TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE WHILST ENGAGED IN THE SURVEY FOR A SOUTHERN RAILROAD TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN DURING 1867-8. By William A. Bell, M.A., M.B. Cantab., Fellow of the Royal Geographical and Ethnological Societies. William A. Bell.

NEW TRACKS IN NORTH AMERICA. A JOURNAL OF TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE WHILST ENGAGED IN THE SURVEY FOR A SOUTHERN RAILROAD TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN DURING 1867-8. By William A. Bell, M.A., M.B. Cantab., Fellow of the Royal Geographical and Ethnological Societies. London: Chapman and Hall, 193, Piccadilly, 1869. 22x14.45 cm (octavo), two volumes: pp. [i-vii] viii-x [xi] xii [xiii-xv] xvi-xxi [xxii] xxiii-xxxvii [xxxviii] xxxix-lvi [lvii] lviii-lxv [lxvi-lxvii] [1] 2-236; [i-v] vi-vii [viii-x] [1] 2-322 + 20-page publisher's catalogue dated "June, 1869" inserted at rear, half titles present, 23 inserted plates with lithographic illustrations, several tinted, one inserted plate with woodcut illustration, nine woodcut illustrations in the text (including one on each title page), folded colored map, 3 "diagrams" (i.e. 3 small maps on an inserted plate), nineteenth century three-quarter polished calf and marbled boards, spine panels richly tooled in gold with green and red leather spine labels, top edges gilt, other edges untrimmed, marbled endpapers. First edition. Bell accompanied the surveying party organized by the Kansas Pacific Railway Company in 1867 to find a southern railroad route to the Pacific Coast through Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and southern California. Their route through the Southwest is traced on the large folded map inserted in volume one. Contains firsthand accounts of Indians in Arizona and New Mexico. "The Native Races of New Mexico, volume I, pp. 155-23, "is something more than a recital of the Spanish narrations from Venegas to Boscana, with their much less than credible theories of the origin of the aborigines of Northwestern Mexico. He shows the migration northward of the Aztec race, driven by Spanish cruelty, with much ingenuity, by the ruins of their peculiar architecture" (Field, p. 27). Returning East, Bell "crossed the Sierra eastward and visited Virginia City (p. 456) and Austin (p. 460) before reaching Utah. He describes the problems of the Central Pacific Railroad, then under construction, as well as the Great Basin and its natural resources. Chapter 13 recounts prospector James White's alleged passage through the Grand Canyon in 1867 and his landing at Callville." (Paher 114). Cowan (1933), p. 45. Edwards, The Enduring Desert, p. 272. Field 109. Graff 246. Howes B330. Flake 393. Paher 114. Rader 330. Streeter Sale (1966) 181. Armorial bookplates of Francis Reynolds Dickinson and Alice May Dickinson on both front paste-downs. Professionally rebacked with original spine panels preserved, professional restoration of spits in map folds, a very good copy in an attractive binding. (#166968).

Price: $1,000.00

See more items by
Printing identification statement for this book:
No statement of printing.