The Oregon Trail. Sketches of Prairie and Rocky Mountain Life

(London: The Folio Society, 1973). With an Introduction by Martin Ridge and Lino-cuts by Peter Pendrey. 8vo; original cloth-backed decorative papered boards, with pictorial gilt spine; tinted top edge; papered slipcase; endpaper map; pp. 309; linocut illustrations. Trace of tape marks to free endpapers; cloth very slightly marked. Very good condition. First published in 1849, Parkman's account remains immensely popular. "From the time that some of its chapters were serialized in a magazine, [The Oregon Trail] has captivated its readers because it communicates; and even though Francis Parkman's literary mannerisms belong to the nineteenth century, he succeeds in bringing a twentieth-century reader into the presence of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains of the American West in the 1840s. Through his words Parkman's readers, for more than a century, have sensed with his eyes, ears and nostrils the existence of wolves and antelope, buffalo and settler, mountain man and Indian. His excitement became their adventure; his fears became their alarms." .