[2], xix, [1], 437 [1] + 6 ad pp. Large colored folding map by J.H. Goldthwait. 7½x4½, original brown cloth, gilt-lettered spine. First Edition

Popular overland narrative with an attractive map of the Western United States. "Samuel Bowles and his party left Atchison, Kansas on May 21, 1865 for San Francisco by way of Salt Lake and across central Nevada, stopping at Austin and Virginia City. They reached the Pacific at the end of June, and traveled overland up the coast to British Columbia, returning to San Francisco by steamer. They visited Yosemite in August and were back in New York by the end of September. The book is composed of Bowles's letters to the `Springfield Republican,' revised and expanded" -Wagner-Camp. The colored folding map of the western U.S., which has an inset "Plan of Central California on an Enlarged Scale," has a 3" stub tear. Cowan p. 67; Graff 370; Sabin 7077; Wagner-Camp 410:1; Wheat Transmississippi 1115.