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- Pacific Coast. Coast Pilot of Alaska (First Part).
Pacific Coast. Coast Pilot of Alaska (First Part).
Davidson, George.
Government Printing Office, ( 1869), Washington
27 cm. 251 pp. Sepia toned lithorgraphs, some folding.
Price: $150
First edition. “From Southern Boundary to Cook’s Inlet.” A note in Worldcat calls this, “one of the first official government documents concerned with the new United States Territory of Alaska. The author, George Davidson, had headed the United States scientific expedition to Alaska in 1867, and his report on the resources of Alaska helped sway Congress to purchase “Seward’s Icebox.” Ricks’s “Alaska bibliography also states, “See in this an interesting account of a Japanese junk wrecked in Alaskan waters” – Ricks p. 78. Much of the information in this book was derived from Russian sources including atlases of charts and other information. Besides being a book of sailing directions, there is information on climate, history, resources, and ethnography of native peoples found in this book. Sadly, this copy contains only 6 of the 8 original plates. However, the two folding plates of Sitka are present, and they’re splendid. Bound as issued in black government cloth with gold lettering. Some soiling and wear to exterior joints, but a good copy, with minuscule manuscript corrections in ink, mostly of spelling and nomenclature.
