NOTES OF A MILITARY RECONNOISSANCE, FROM FORT LEAVENWORTH, IN MISSOURI, TO SAN DIEGO, IN CALIFORNIA, INCLUDING PART OF THE ARKANSAS, DEL NORTE, AND GILA RIVERS

Washington DC: 30th Congress, Wendell & Van Benthuysen, 1848. Hardcover. Good+. 5th issue. House Ex. Doc. No. 41. 30th Congress, 1st Session. AND James William Abert, REPORT OF LIEUT. J. W. ABERT, OF HIS EXAMINATION OF NEW MEXICO IN THE YEARS 1846-'47. Bound in recent cloth (ca 1950?), moderately soiled, with early or original label. 614pp. All 64 plates present + the 3 single page sketches & 3 folding maps (browning at folds, splitting at many folds, some chips) in the rear. This copy includes the huge folding map called for by Wagner-Camp-Becker only in the Senate edition, (but noted by Howes in some copies) "Military Reconnaissance of the Arkansas Rio del Norte and Rio Gila." Th e second map, "Sketch of part of the march & wagon road of Lt. Colonel Cooke." appears to be complete, but has smaller dimensions than WCB describes. The large Emory map (76 x 165 cm) is in predictably fragile condition at the folds, with many of them split. However, to quote Carl Wheat (Trans-Mississippi, Vol. III, p.6), "The map of Lieutenant Emory (including the map of Abert and Peck and the map of Cooke) is a document of towering significance in the cartographic history of the West". "epoch making" (p. 7). A tight copy with new endpapers. Foxing throughout. Old waterstains to the upper margins, not affecting the images of the plates. A rarity of American military history & exploration. Graff 1249, Cowan p195, Howes E145, W-C 148:5, SFT 188. Feb. 9, 1848.