Voyages from Montreal, on the River St. Laurence, through the Continent of North America, to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans; in the Years 1789 and 1793. With a preliminary account of the rise, progress, and present state of the Fur Trade of that country

London. Printed for T. Cadell, Jun. & W. Davies; Cobbett & Morgan; and W. Creech at Edinburgh. 1801. Full 4to., 28.5cm, tall copy, untrimmed, The First Edition. 2ff, pp. viii,cxxxii,412, (errata); engraved frontis portrait; 3 large, engraved, folding maps; few small, old repairs to maps, not affecting image; light foxing/toning. of text and usual offsetting from portrait to title-page; later full diced-calf, wide margins, gilt decorated raised bands, full gilt decorations in the panels, double crimson and green crushed morocco labels, gilt titles, wide decorated gilt decorated borders on the diced calf boards, gilt roll decoration on the board edges, blind decorated inner dentelles, matched marbled endpapers, complete with the half title, portrait and errata leaf (often wanting), some toning on the half title from tranfer from the verso of the free marbled endpaper, also some normal transfer on the title page, otherwise a spectacular tall untrimmed copy. (Cgc). Sabin 43414. T.P. L. 658; Streeter VI-3653. WCB 1:]. Field 967. Vlach 51. Gra?' 2630," Howes M133. Peel 25. Hill, p. 187; Cox ll, p177. Lande 1317. Smith 6382. Strathern 343. Leaving Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabaska in 1789, Mackenzie set out for the Arctic Sea on the river now bearing his name, and returned the same year. In 1793 he again set out, this time for the Pacific. He and his party worked their way up the Peace River, the Parsnip River, crossed the Continental Divide, and discovered the Fraser River. They travelled down the Fraser for a bit and then struck overland," they reached and crossed the Coast Ranges, reached the Bella Coola River which they descended, and found themselves at the river's mouth in a tidal inlet of the Pacific, thus completing the first overland journey, north of Mexico, across North America. Many of the nineteenth-century explorers who followed in Mackenzie 's tracks found his accuracy remarkable. These two expeditions were undertaken on behalf of the North West Company in its attempt to break the monopoly of the fur trade held by the Hudson's Bay Company.