New Tracks in North America, A Journal of Travel and Adventure Whilst Engaged in a Survey for a Southern Railroad to the Pacific Ocean During 1867-8 by Bell, William A - 1869

London: Chapman and Hall, 1869. First Edition. Two volumes, pp lxv, 236; vii, 322, complete with 20 colored lithograph plates, 3 botanical plates, woodcuts in the text, a colored folding map and a colored plate with three small maps. An attractive set, recased, with new endpapers but original cloth binding retained. Vol. I has a few pencil markings, one plate with repair to the verso, and one page with a corner missing, resulting in loss of a few characters of text. Vol. II very clean. Bell, a British physician, traveled to St. Louis in 1867 to study the principles of homeopathy. There he joined Palmer's Kansas Pacific Railway expedition (1868-69) in the informal capacity of both physician and photographer. The expedition sought the best route to extend the Railway across Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and southern California to the Pacific coast. Bell's description of his experiences is credited for its scholarship and readability. Part II includes a lengthy section on "The Native Races of New Mexico," in which Bell "traces the migration northward of the Aztec race, driven by Spanish cruelty, with much ingenuity, by the ruins of their popular architecture" (Field 109). The folding map shows all of the West beyond the 100th meridian and south of the 42nd parallel as well as Mexico north of the 26th parallel. Wheat comments that it "has a distinctly modern aspect, since it applies different colors to varying elevations of the land." After the expedition, Bell and Palmer became business partners, together founding the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad as well as the city of Colorado Springs and many smaller enterprises in central Colorado. Streeter 181; Howes B-330; Graff 246; Farqhuar 25.