Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America, in the Years 1766, 1767, and 1768

London: Printed for C. Dilly, in the Poultry; H. Payne, in Pall-Mall; and J. Phillips, in George-Yard, Lombard-Street, 1781. 8vo. (8 1/8 x 5 inches). Third edition. [x1] [a4] A-Nn4 Oo2. 302 ff. [12] [1]-22 [16] [i]-xvii 18-543 [21]. 604 pp. 8 plates including a mezzotint frontispiece portrait of Carver, 2 hand-colored folding maps, and five folding plates, four of which are hand-colored and include depictions of a tobacco plant and a peace pipe. Frontis, Title, Advertisement, Dedication, Address to the Public, Account of Captain J. Carver, Contents, Introduction, Journal of the Travels, Appendix, Directions for Placing Maps, Index. Half mottled morocco with blind roll-tooling over red and blue marbled-paper boards, spine ruled in gilt in six compartments with red calf lettering-piece in second compartment and gilt foliate printer's device in rest

"Third and best edition" of Carver's travels into the American West; containing the first published mention of Oregon. [Sabin]

A classic American travelogue, here in the third and best edition, with expanded text, an added biographical sketch of the author, an index, and the additional plate of the tobacco plant not found in the first two editions, which is especially well-colored. Carver traveled farther west than any Englishman before the American Revolution, going as far as the Dakotas, exploring the headwaters of the Mississippi, and passing over the Great Lakes. [Howes] His text and one of his two maps are the first published mentions of "Oregon." Carver discourses on natural history and comments on the Native Americans he encounters on his travels. "His positive portrayal of their manners and customs helped dispel the eighteenth-century image of Indians as savages. In some cases Carver's is the earliest description published of the Sioux and Chippewa groups he encountered." [Davis] Carver's work served as an important source book and stimulus for later explorers, especially Mackenzie and Lewis and Clark, but also more broadly rose the public's curiosity in routes to the Pacific. Carver, born in Massachusetts, was an explorer, cartographer, and author, who was one of the first white men to explore and map areas of Minnesota and Wisconsin, including what would later be named Carver County in Minnesota. He served in the Colonial militia during the French and Indian War and, while enlisted, mastered surveying and mapmaking. In 1763, he left the army to explore new territories, and in 1766, Robert Rogers appointed Carver to lead an expedition to find a route to the Pacific Ocean and East Indies. He kept a detailed account of this expedition to discover a Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean. After failing to find money to publish his journal, and in pursuit of a claim for compensation from the British Government for the work he put into the Northwest Passage expedition, Carver traveled to London and had the present work published. Carver's book was an immediate success when first published in 1778, and a second London edition followed the next year. It was an important book in the history of the exploration of the American West as Carver was the first English-speaking explorer to venture west of the upper Mississippi River. He anticipated the idea of a continental divide as he was the first to mention a large mountain range to the west (The Rockies) that blocks the westward passage. Carver's friend, the well-known Quaker physician and author Dr. John Coakley Lettsom, explains his involvement in the present third edition on a single-page advertisement leaf at the front of the book: "Few works have had a more rapid sale. Two large editions having been disposed of in two years. This induced the proprietors to print a third: but, as soon as this impression was finished, I purchased both the printed copies and the copyright. I have since added to the work, some Account of the Author's life, and an Index to the Travels, which are published separately, for the convenience of the purchasers of the first and second editions."

Bell C102. Davis, Huntington Free Library. ESTC T133716. Evans 24181. Field 251. Graff 622. Greenly, Michigan 21. Howes C-215. JCB II, 2450. Lande 108. Lee, pp.165-169. Pilling, Algonquian, p.68. Reese, Best of the West 13. Reese and Osborn, Struggle for North America 88. Sabin 11184. Streeter III, 1772. TPL 415. Vail 670.