REPORT OF THE EXPLORING EXPEDITION TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS in the Year 1842, and to Oregon and North California in the Years 1843-'44 . . . Printed by Order of the Senate of the United States (28th Congress, 2nd Session, Senate Doc. 174)

Washington: Gales & Seaton, Printers, 1845. First edition, Senate issue.. Hardcover. Covers worn with some surface skinning to leather and wear to joints, minimall foxing and toning to text.. Contemporary half tan calf and marbled boards, gilt spine label, octavo (6 x 9.25 inches), 693pp. 22 lithograph plates, including 13 views, 5 plates of fossils, and 4 botanical plates. 4 maps bound in, including 2 folding maps. Large folding pocket map not present (nor is a pocket to put it in), presumably as issued.

Senate issue, including the astronomical and meteorological reports omitted from the House issue (and later reprints). Fremont's expeditions of 1842-44 resulted in the first reliably mapped route to the west coast. As expedition leader, Fremont achieved all he set out to do and more. After attaining his objective in Oregon in the fall of 1843 he turned his party south to the Great Basin and then -following the Truckee River- crossed the Sierra Nevada in January and February of 1844, reaching Sutter's Fort on March 6 without losing a man, though only half the party's animals reached their destination and a brass cannon was abandoned on the way. One of the folding maps in the text charts the course of the Rio de los Americanos (American RIver) from Mountain Lake (Lake Tahoe) to the Sacramento at New Helvetia. The editing of the field reports, drafting and writing of the narrative "Report" is now attributed to Fremont's wife, Jessie Benton Fremont. Zamorano 80 #39, Cowan page 223, Wagner-Camp IV:115:1, Graf 1436, Howes F370).