Across the continent: A summer's journey to the Rocky Mountains, the Mormons, and the Pacific states, with Speaker Colfax. By Samuel Bowles, Editor of the Springfield (Mass.) Republican. Springfield, Mass. Samuel Bowles & Company. New York: Hurd & Houghton, 1866. 19x12 cm, pp. [1-2: advertisements] [i-iii] iv-x [xi] xii-xx [1] 2-452 [453-454: blank] [1-2] 3-6: advertisements, 1 map (colored and folded), original brown pebbled cloth, front and rear panels ruled in blind, spine panel stamped in gold, brown coated endpapers. First edition, second printing. A series of letters and papers written during an overland journey in the summer of 1865 for publication in the Springfield Republican. Pages 223-37 comprise a description of Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove. Bowles notes that there had been 300 visitors to the valley so far that season, compared to 100 in 1864. He refers to the recent Yosemite Grant and commends the idea of preserving the valley as a public park. Pages 429-37 contain "supplementary papers" on Yosemite and the giant sequoia, comprising a geological description of Yosemite Valley by J. D. Whitney and measurements of some of the big trees in the Calaveras Grove. The text of this 1866 printing is identical to that of the 1865 printing. The ads at rear paginate [1-2] 3-6. They appear to be identical except for the missing page numbers on the first leaf. Wagner, Camp and Becker (1982) 410:2 (not noting this printing). Cloth worn at spine ends and corner tips, faint ghost of a label removed from the spine panel, overhanging fore-edge margin of folded map a bit frayed, a very good copy. (#172721).
Price: $250.00
No statement of printing.