The Rambler in North America: MDCCCXXXII - MDCCCXXXIII

London. Published by R.B. Seeley and W. Burnside. 1835. 1st Edition. Hardcover. 12mo, 20cm, the first edition, in 2 volumes., xi,321,[l(ad)] & viii,336pp., original green patterned cloth, neatly rebacked with the original spines laid down, gilt spine titles, the front free fly has 2 large chips, otherwise very good to fine set in publisher's original binding. (cgc) Charles Latrobe, author of The Alpenstock, was a "confessed cascade hunter". He pierced into Canada twice during his American tour, once crossing from Buffalo to Niagara and back via London to Detroit, the other time crossing the mountains of northern Maine through to the valley of the Chaudire, proceeding to the Falls on the Saint-Maurice, Grand'Mre, "Shawinnegane", and the little falls at Les Chats, and back to the American side. In Upper Canada, chatting with Indians at the Moravian mission, he noted sadly that most wore European costume, with the exception of the aged Old Boar, who wore "leggins and a scalp lock". London he glumly dismissed; he agreed with his friend Washington Irving that the Canadian provinces held "no particular interest". (Watterston) Latrobe came to America in 1832 in an attempt to take the young Swiss Count de Pourtales away from home and to experience some excitement in the wild countries. In the course of the next two years, the two went on four trips to the South, as well in the West where they went buffalo hunting with Henry L. Ellsworth and Washington Irving (to whom the book is dedicated). Irving described Latrobe as "a man of a thousand occupations; a botanist, a geologist, a hunter of beetles and butterflies, a musical amateur, sketcher of no mean pretensions. a very indefatigable, if not always a very successful, sportsman." Clark - "There is a good description of a Florida plantation." Waterston. p60; Lande s1238. Buck 250; Clark III: 62; Field 894; Graff 2413; Howes L-127; Rader 2206; Sabin 39222 (wrongly calling for a map which did not appear until the second edition of 1836). Wagner-Camp(4) 57: 1.