Beschreibung:

MAP]. COLLOT, George H.V. (ca 1752- 1805). Map of the Missouri; of the higher parts of the Mississippi; and of the elevated Plain, where the Waters Divide, which run, Eastward into the River St. Lawrence; North East into Hudson's Bay; North North West into the Frozen Sea; and South into the Gulf of Mexico. To Which is added Mackenzie's track in 1789 . [Paris: Arthus Bertrand, 1826]. Engraved folded map after Collot by Tardieu (sheet 568 x 488 mm). (Some pale offsetting, tiniest hole along fold touching image.) A VERY RARE MAP OF THE MISSOURI AND UPPER MISSISSIPPI. At the easternmost side of the map is part of Hudson's Bay and three of the Great Lakes. To the West is the "Country of the Nations of the Serpent" along the Pacific Ocean. "This 'Map of the Missouri' grew out of a reconnaissance mission undertaken in 1796 by the French General George Henri Victor Collot. His account, two text volumes and an atlas, was later [in 1826] published simultaneously in French as Voyage dans l'Amerique septentrionale and in English as A Journey in North America . A nineteenth-century bookseller called this work 'one of the most famous, most important, and rarest of all books of Mid-Western Explorations.' Its rarity is due to the deliberate destruction of all but three hundred French and one hundred English copies by the publisher, who had purchased the edition from Collot's estate, hoping thereby to increase its value... Collot's mission was to gain a greater knowledge of the topography, resources, and peoples of the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys, and to assess whether the area could be retaken by the French" (Emily Troxell Jaycox, in Mapping the West , ed. Paul Cohen, NY, 2002, pp.68-70). See Graff 31; Howes C601; Sabin 14460; Wheat Transmissippi West , p.160.