Central Route to the Pacific, from the Valley of the Mississippi to California: Journal of the Expedition of E.F. Beale, Superintendent of Indian Affairs in California, and Gwinn Harris Heap, from Missouri to California, in 1853

136+46 ad pages with frontispiece, 11 of 12 illustrated lithograph plates (some in color), tables and appendices. Octavo (9" x 5½") bound in original blindstamped cloth with spine lettered in gilt; housed in custom cloth slipcase. (Cowan, p 273. Howes H-378. Sabin 31175. Streeter Sale 3177. Graff 1837. Wagner Camp 235.) First Edition.

Well-illustrated first-hand relation of Western travel. The map, "Map of the Central Route from the Valley of the Mississippi to California. Compiled & drawn by G.H. Heap," not in all copies is not present here. Also lacking plate XI, Crossing Laguna Creek.

Gwinn Harris Heap, a draftsman, legal indexer, diplomat, and camel agent, born in Chester, Pennsylvania delineated views of the West printed by P. S. Duval in the 1850s. From 1846 to 1855 Heap was employed as a clerk in Washington, D.C., where he compiled the cumulative index to the first edition of the "United States Public Statutes at Large" In 1853 he traveled across the country with his cousin Edwin Fitzgerald Beale to survey a possible route for a transcontinental railroad. Heap kept a diary and sketched scenes during their trip, thirteen of which were lithographed by P. S. Duval to illustrate their Central Route to the Pacific, from the Valley of the Mississippi to California: Journal of the Expedition of E. F. Beale, Superintendent of Indian Affairs in California, and Gwinn Harris Heap, From the Missouri to California in 1853 (Philadelphia, 1854). Afterward, Heap and Beale became involved with the short-lived War Department initiative of importing camels from the Near East for use as pack animals in the American Southwest.

Condition: Extremities worn, spine ends fraying, spine gilt faded; frontispiece detached; good or better.