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Reporting on the Corps of
Discovery, I
Gass, Patrick, 1771-1870.
A journal of the voyages and travels of a
corps of discovery under the command of Captain Lewis and Captain Clarke, from
the mouth of the river Missouri, through the interior parts of North America, to
the Pacific Ocean; during the years 1804, 1805, & 1806.
Pittsburgh: Printed for David M'Keehan; London,
Re-printed for J. Budd 1808. Inscribed by William Cobbett to Dr. Batty. Brown
calf. Bookplate of Alfred Chapin Rogers.
Patrick Gass had volunteered for the expedition
in 1803 and was promoted to sergeant in August 1804. His record of the journey,
published only a year after the return, appeared seven years ahead of the
official Lewis and Clark narrative.
Reporting on the Corps of Discovery, II
Fisher, William, comp. An interesting account of the voyages and
travels of Captains Lewis and Clarke, in the years 1804-5, & 6. Giving a
faithful description of the river Missouri and its source . . . To which is
added a complete dictionary of the Indian tongue.
Baltimore: Printed and published by P. Mauro,
1813. Rebound.
This spurious compilation, which first appeared
in Philadelphia in1809, pirated Jefferson’s and Lewis’s interim reports of 1806
and padded them out with extracts from Carver’s Travels and Mackenzie's
Voyage from Montreal, together with a Cree vocabulary.
Reporting on the Corps of Discovery, III
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark,
Travels to the source of the Missouri river
and across the American continent to the Pacific ocean. Performed by order of
the government of the United States, in the years 1804, 1805, and 1806.
London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown,
1814. Modern green half morocco, by Sangorski & Sutcliffe. Bookplate of
Alfred Chapin Rogers.
The official narrative of the expedition was not
prepared by Lewis and Clark themselves, but edited from their original journals
by Nicholas Biddle and Paul Allen. Though announced for publication in
1810, it first appeared in Philadelphia in 1814. For this English
edition, the editor, Thomas Rees, made both cuts and substitutions.
An American Response to the Lewis and Clark
Travels
"B," "Original Review–Lewis and Clarke’s
Travels," Analectic Magazine (Philadelphia), 5
(February 1815): 127-149; (March 1815): 210-234. South Carolina College
library.
After copious extracts, the reviewer judges the
expedition to have been "conducted and sustained throughout with the greatest
skill, courage, and fortitude, with the loss of only one man, who died of
sickness on their passage up the river, and occasioning the death of only two
Indians. . . . We almost imagine ourselves to be of the party; and the journal
seems like a vehicle by which we are enabled to keep pace with the travelers."
A British Response to the Lewis and Clark
Travels
[John Playfair and Webb Seymour], "Travels to the
Source of the Missouri," Edinburgh Review, 24 (February
1815): 412-438.
This review stressed particularly the information
that Lewis and Clark brought back about the life and culture of the native
American tribes; the expedition was, it concluded," a band of active and
intrepid men, which no country in the world would not be proud to acknowledge."
Reporting Scientific Discoveries
John James Audubon, 1785-1851, " Plate CCLXXII:
Lewis’s Woodpecker," from Audubon, The Birds of America from
Drawings made in the United States. 5 vols.
New York: J. J. Audubon; Philadelphia: J.
B. Chevalier, 1842. Half morocco.
The knowledge that Lewis and Clark brought back
from the expedition, in geography, ethnology, and natural history, was of wide
interest to scientists worldwide. Shown here is one of several new species
that the expedition discovered, as drawn by John James Audubon. It is shown here
for practical reasons in the smaller octavo format, rather than from the South
Carolina College set of Audubon’s great double-elephant folio.
Major Pike: The Other Expedition into Upper
Louisiana
Pike, Zebulon Montgomery, 1779-1813.
An account of expeditions to the sources of
the Mississippi: and through the western parts of Louisiana . . . performed by
order of the government of the United States during the years 1805, 1806, and
1807. Philadelphia: Conrad, . . . 1810. Contemporary
tree calf. John Shaw Billings Collection.
During the years of the Lewis and Clark
expedition, Major Zebulon Pike led two parallel expeditions through other parts
of the Louisiana Purchase, the first to the source of the Mississippi, and the
second westward, and across into Mexican territory.
Pike’s
 Expedition
on the Upper Mississippi
Nicholas King, "Map of the Mississippi River from
its Source to the Mouth of the Missouri," in Zebulon M. Pike, An account of
expeditions to the sources of the Mississippi: and through the western parts of
Louisiana.
Philadelphia: Conrad, . . . 1810. Contemporary half calf.
Bookplate of Alfred Chapin Rogers.
Major Long’s Expedition to the Rockies
James, Edwin, 1797-1861, comp.
Account of an expedition from Pittsburgh to
the Rocky Mountains: performed in the years 1819 and '20, by order of the Hon.
J. C. Calhoun, sec'y of war: under the command of Major Stephen H. Long: from
the notes of Major Long, Mr. T. Say, and other gentlemen of the exploring party.
2 vols.
Philadelphia: Carey and Lea, 1823. Half
calf. Label of South Carolina College.
Stephen Long (1784-1864), a Dartmouth graduate
and former West Point instructor, had previously explored the upper
Mississippi. This is one of two accounts of the expedition; the other, by W.H.
Keating (1824), is also in the Thomas Cooper Library collection.
Prince Maximilian of Wied: Retracing the Steps
of Lewis and Clark
Maximilian, Prince of Wied, 1782-1867,
Travels in the interior of North America. . . . Translated from the German, by
H. Evans Lloyd. Illustrated by Karl Bodmer.
London: Ackermann,
1843.
Prince Maximilian’s account of his travels in
the United States in 1832-34 was first published in German in 1839. The text
volume, opened here at Maximilian’s discussion of Mandan beliefs, shows the
continuing effect of the Lewis and Clark expedition in setting the agenda for
subsequent explorers and ethnographers. Most of the illustrations
elsewhere in this exhibition come from the plates and vignettes for
Maximilian’s volume, painted by the Swiss artist Karl Bodmer.
 Frémont’s Expeditions to the Rockies and the
Sierra Nevada
Frémont, John Charles, 1813-1890.
Report of the exploring expedition to the
Rocky Mountains in the year 1842, and to Oregon and North California in the
years 1843-44. . . Printed by order of the Senate of the United States.
Washington: Gales and Seaton, 1845. Modern
calf. Stamping of South Carolina College.
John Charles Frémont, from Georgia, became
famous for his crossing of the Sierra Nevada to California. He was briefly
governor of California during the Bear Flag rebellion in 1845, and following the
Gold Rush he became one of California’s first senators and the Republican
Party's first presidential candidate, in 1856. After the Civil War, he lost
most of his wealth in a failed attempt to found a transcontinental railroad.
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