xviii, 482 pp. Large folding copper-engraved map (22¾x25½" plus margins) of the western and middle portions of North America, tipped-in on linen stub before page 1, as issued. With errata slip tipped-in at start of Preface. 8½x5½, bound in period half brown morocco and marbled boards, spine decoratively tooled and lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers and edges. First British Edition.
Originally published in 1840 as a Senate document, which was titled: Memoir, Historical and Political, on the Northwest Coast of North America..., and later reprinted and enlarged, this being the first British edition of Greenhow's important study. Wheat describes the map at some length: "Robert Greenhow published in 1844 a large map wholly different from his Burr-drawn map of 1840, drawn this time by George H. Ringgold (not the Cadwalader Ringgold of later California coastal chart fame). It covered `the Western and Middle Portions of North America,' to illustrate Greenhow's History of Oregon and California.... The map, while well drawn and engraved, contains nothing original, though it is up-to-date enough to have a bit of Fremont in it, and `Eustis Lake' is here called `Sublette Lake,' a survival of Jedediah Smith through Burr or Wilkes. No northern boundary of the `Oregon Region' is shown west of the Rockies, and since Greenhow was an advocate of at least 54o 40', he did not even carry the northern boundary across from the mountains on that line. It is said that his History of Oregon and California grew out of his 1840 Memoir. And his reply to Thomas Falconer, and the latter's rejoinder, followed by a sur-reply and a sur-rejoinder, and so on, form an amusing chapter of Western history." See Cowan p.249; Graff 1652; Howes G389; Sabin 28362; Smith 3842; Wheat Transmississippi 491.