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Catalogue
77
North
America
Canada
& the Arctic
The United States
The West Indies
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101.
MICHAUX, FRANÇOIS ANDRÉ (1770-1855). The North
American Sylva, or a Description of the Forest Trees, Of the United
States, Canada and Nova Scotia. Considered particularly with respect
to their use in the Arts and their introduction into Commerce; to
which is added a description of the most Useful of the European
Forest Trees. Illustrated by 150 colored engravings. By F. Andrew
Michaux. Philadelphia: Sold by Thomas Dobson - Solomon Conrad; Paris:
Printed by C. D'Hautel, 1817-1818-1819. Three volumes. First American
edition. $12,500
Small 4to; pp. [iv], xii, xii, 268, [1]; pp. [iv], 250; pp. [iv],
285, [1] (Errata); 156 stipple-engraved plates, printed in colours
and finished by hand, after paintings by the two Rédoutés
(Pierre Joseph and Henri Joseph), and Pancrace Bessa. Contemporary
full green morocco (spines sunned); spines lettered and decorated
in gilt between gilt-ruled raised bands; covers elaborately bordered
in gilt and blind, with central double-gilt-ruled panels; a.e.g.;
and gilt-ruled turn-ins; coated endpapers; covers rubbed at edges,
with some light scratches; usual light offsetting, and sporadic
foxing, mostly light, but some leaves, mainly in vol. II, are darker.
Each volume is signed on the front paste-down by John P[endleton]
Kennedy (1795-1870), noted Baltimore author and politician.
Nissen BBI: 1361; Bennett, p. 76l Meisel, III: pp. 379-380; Kress
B.6981; Raphael, An Oak Spring Flora, 20; Reese, Stamped with a
National Character, 21; Sabin 48695. The publication history and
bibliography of this highly important work are complex. The author
first visited North America in 1785, accompanying his father, André
Michaux, himself a distinguished botanist and traveller, in quest
of trees and plants that could be of benefit to France. After his
father's death in 1802, Michaux returned to the United States, touring
extensively, and then returned to Paris to compile this work. It
first appeared in Paris in French in twenty-one parts, issued between
1810 and 1813, and then in three volumes in French. The text was
then translated into English by Augustus Lucas Hillhouse (1791-1859),
a member of a prominent New Haven family, who was resident in France;
Hillhouse also contributed a 38-page account of the olive tree (vol.
II, pp. 166-204). This edition, with the Philadelphia imprint, would
appear to have been issued before the edition with the Paris imprint,
the dates of which are 1818-1819; both were printed by the same
printer. This copy has the rare first-issue of volume I [1817],
which was reprinted in 1818. The work contains six plates more than
called for in the title. Some years later the American naturalist,
William Maclure (1763-1840) purchased the copper plates and new
editions then followed, often accompanied by the three volumes of
Thomas Nuttall's work. It is, however, generally accepted, that
the plates of the Paris-printed editions, such as this one, which
were produced under the supervision of Michaux himself, are of superior
quality. The booksellers in Philadelphia, Dobson and Conrad, are
also of interest. Dobson (1751-1823) emigrated from Scotland to
Philadelphia and was responsible for the first American edition
of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the first complete Hebrew Bible
printed in America; Conrad (1779-1831) was born in Pennsylvania
of German and Quaker stock and was well-known as a mineralogist
and botanist; his natural history collections and his herbarium
went to the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences upon his death.
We have located copies of this edition only at the BL, BAnQ, Dalhousie,
UBC, U of T, and NY Botanical; Harvard has a set in parts, i.e.
seven "half-volumes"; there are also several copies with
the later issue of volume 1.
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102.
MOORSOM, Capt. W[ILLIAM SCARTH]. Letters from Nova Scotia;
comprising Sketches of a Young Country. London, Henry Colborn and
Richard Bentley, 1830. First edition. $750
8vo; pp. viii, 371, [1], [4] (Publ's cat); 1 folding map and 3 uncoloured
aquatint plates; original paper over boards and paper spine label;
binding rubbed and chipped but totally unsophisticated; text clean,
tight and untrimmed; from the library of Sir Thomas Phillipps, with
his shelf number and Middle Hill initials.
Abbey Travel I:621; Gagnon I:2442 (plates coloured); Lande 655;
TPL 1504; Sabin 50472. The author was a captain in the 52nd Light
Infantry and was stationed in Nova Scotia from 1826 to 1831. He
travelled extensively throughout the island and, being a civil engineer
by training, gives detailed descriptions of the city of Halifax,
and other areas of the island in which he travelled. A rather scarce
work.
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103.
MURRAY, HUGH. The United States of America. their history
from the earliest period; their industry, commerce, banking transactions,
and national works; their institutions and character, political,
social and literary; with A Survey of the Territory, and Remarks
on the Prospects and Plans of Emigrants. Edinburgh, Oliver &
Boyd, 1844. Three volumes. First edition. $225
Small 8vo; pp. 400; pp. 380; pp. 379; 3 engraved vignettes, 2 engraved
portraits, and 6 engraved portraits in the text. Contemporary half
morocco-like leather; marbled boards, endpapers and fore-edges;
armorial bookplates; binding little worn; text clean and tight.
Not in Howes; Sabin 51503. A very comprehensive study of the United
States, "and likely to form the most important portion "
of the Edinburgh Cabinet Library.
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104.
NOBLE, Rev. LOUIS L[EGRAND]. After Icebergs with a Painter;
A Summer Voyage to Labrador and Around Newfoundland. New York, D.
Appleton & Company, 1861. First edition. $900
Large 12mo; pp. xiv, (2), 336, (8) (Publ. cat.); six lithographs
on heavy paper. Original cloth; original yellow endpapers; gilt
lettering on spine little dulled; bottom corner of front cover minimally
rubbed; text lightly toned; the cleanest copy we have had, and complete
with all tissue-guards and with adverts. Small paper book-label
of Jesse Duck on front paste-down.
Arctic Biblio. 12352; O'Dea 661; Sabin 55380; Smith N18; TPL 3926
(lacking 3 plates). A scarce work, with copious descriptions of
icebergs, of the fauna and flora of Newfoundland, Labrador, and
Nova Scotia, and of whales and whaling. The lithographs are after
paintings by the noted 19th-century artist, Frederick Edwin Church,
who accompanied Noble on this voyage.
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105.
[NORTH WEST COMPANY]. VOYAGEUR CONTRACT. Par devant les Notaires
de la Province du Bas Canada ... Montréal, 1806. $2,500
Single folio sheet (315 mm x 190 mm). Partly-printed document with
manuscript insertions on recto; docketed in manuscript on verso.
A contract between M'Tavish, Frobisher & Co. [and John Ogilvy
and Thomas Thain], and Antoine Ladouceur of Ste. Anne. Signed by
Ladouceur with his mark.
Vide Lande, "The Development of the Voyageur Contract",
1989, nos. 64 and 65. The fur trading company here hires Ladouceur
as its agent at a major trading post, identified on the docket as
Temiskaming, located at the headwaters of the Ottawa River in northern
Ontario/Quebec. The post was first established by the French, and
then taken over by the North West Company c. 1800. It was an important
post, as its location approximately half way between Montreal and
Hudson's Bay made it a centre of the fur trade, and as exploration
and commerce expanded westward, the Temiscaming [Témiscamingue]
fort became a gateway to that trade. The two specimens of contracts
cited in the Lande work are in the names of Joseph Ladouceur, also
of Ste. Anne, and of Joachim Joseph Ladouceur, fils, of St. Benoit,
all within the same time frame. The manuscript portions of the three
contracts are all by the same hand.
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