8vo (210 x 125 mm). Frontispiece portrait, 5 tables (3 folding) and 6 maps (5 folding). (Frontispiece with gutter margin renewed and repairs, one table with some tissue-repairs and slight loss, maps linen-backed, some occasional spotting or browning to text.) Modern quarter morocco and marbled boards, with maps loose in rear cover pocket.

FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST GOVERNMENT EXPLORATION OF THE SOUTHWEST. In 1806 Pike led an expedition to the southwestern borders of the Louisiana Purchase. He had orders to explore the Arkansas and Red Rivers, and to obtain information about nearby Spanish territory. It was on this trip that he tried, unsuccessfully, to climb the mountain peak later named for him. His party headed south from Colorado, ending up in what is now northern New Mexico, where they were stopped by Spanish officials and charged with illegal entry into Spanish-held territory. All of Pike's maps, notes and papers became the property of the Spanish, with the party escorted through Santa Fe, across Texas and released on the Spanish-American border in Louisiana.

Pike's published account of this last expedition, with information about the weakness of Spanish authority in Santa Fe, and the profitability of trading with Mexico, stirred businessmen and politicians into expanding to Texas. He also helped establish the myth of the "Great American Desert" which slowed growth into the Great Plains. Field 1217; Graff 3290; Howes P-373; Jenkins Basic Texas Books 163; Sabin 62836; Streeter Texas 1047; Wagner-Camp-Becker 9:1; Wheat, Mapping the Transmississippi West 297-29.