The Shoe and Canoe; or, Pictures of Travel in the Canadas, Illustrative of Their Scenery and of Colonial Life; with Facts and Opinions on Emigration, State Policy, and Other Points of Public Interest BIGSBY, John Jeremiah (1792-1881) Americana & Canadiana

(7 5/8 x 4 3/4 inches). Vol. I: xv, [1], 352pp.; Vol. II: viii, 346pp. Illustrated with 4 engraved maps (2 folding), 1 plan, and 20 engraved plates by Young after the author. Many pages unopened. Publisher's stamped blue cloth, spines lettered gilt First edition of one of the classic narratives of travel in British North America, richly illustrated from the author s own sketches. A very good copy in original publisher's cloth. An engaging narrative of British North America by John Jeremiah Bigsby, an English army surgeon and geologist whose Canadian service from 1818 to 1826 provided the basis for these volumes. Posted initially to Lower Canada, Bigsby was sent to the Ottawa River in 1818 to treat a typhus outbreak among Irish immigrants, then toured widely to report on geological resources. In 1819 he was appointed medical officer and secretary to the British Boundary Commission, working on the Lake St. Clair-Lake Erie line and on surveys of northern Lake Huron and the long corridor between Fort William and the Lake of the Woods (1819-1822). The Shoe and Canoe distils those years into a lively account rich in landscape description, natural history, river and lake travel, and observations on Indigenous communities and the fur-trade world. The plates include early views in and beyond the Great Lakes, among them Black Falls on Lake Superior, Drummond Island, Confiance Harbour, Lake Entredeux, Lake Bois Blanc, Fluor Island, Nipigon Bay, the Thunder Mountains, Lake Lacroix, and Rat Portage on the Lake of the Woods. As Field noted, the second volume in particular carries the reader "through the wilds of Canada" and records scenes from Indigenous life then little known to the British public. The work remains valued for its eye-witness accounts of canoe travel, the fur-trade world, and the lake and river landscapes between the Niagara frontier and Sault Ste. Marie. Bigsby later became a Fellow of the Geological Society and the Royal Society, established the Bigsby Medal, and published the Thesaurus Siluricus and Thesaurus Devonico-Carboniferus. Sabin 5360; Field 133; Staton and Tremaine 1426; Lande 1582; Morgan p. 31; Story p. 72.