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. With Numerous Plates and Maps.
London. Published by Chapman and Hall. 1850. 12mo., 19cm. the first edition. in two volumes, xv,[1],352 & viii,346pp. with 4 engraved maps (2 folding, one with 1 fold) and 21 full page engraved views (inc. one plan), in the original blind decorated dark blue cloth, blind stamped decorations on the spine and boards, gilt spine titles, gilt vignette and title on the upper covers, (a classic gilt illustration, paddling and smoking a peace pipe in a traditional birch bark canoe), small call numbers on vol.2, discreet and barely visible, small gilt library stamps on both sides 'dept. geography Cambridge), both engraved frontis views foxed, there is a small water spot on page 162 of volume 2 , despite all an attractive set in the original cloth binding - A classic this have always been a difficult book to fine and was always quickly saleable. near fine thus, rare. Item #43517
T.P.L. 1426. Lande 1582. Sabin 5360. Story p72. Waterston. Bigsby was a British army surgeon and geologist who came to Lower Canada in 1818 as surgeon of a German rifle regiment. He spent six months dealing with an outbreak of dysentery among immigrants in Quebec and at Hawkesbury, Upper Canada. In 1819 he toured Lower and Upper Canada to investigate geological resources and was secretary to the Boundary Commission during the running of the line between Fort William and Lake of the Woods in 1822. He comments on conditions as he saw them, combining description with philosophical musings. The engravings are made from Bigsby's sketches.
"Energetic, well-informed, opinionated, Dr. Bigsby reminisces about his long connection with Canada, first as Army surgeon in 1818, treating typhus victims in Quebec, and at Hawkesbury, Upper Canada, in 1818, next as geologist collecting specimens along the old voyageur route, Ottawa/ Nippissing, then as scientific advisor to the Boundary Commission that drew the line in Lake Huron, 1819, Lakes St. Clair and Erie, 1821 and between Thunder Bay and Lake of the Woods, 1822. In his landscape sketches, Bigsby claims to depict the non- picturesque, the "places Bartlett did not visit." His verbal descriptions, both of frontier country and of Quebec, Montreal and Toronto, are equally unconventional. Indians in the city, squalid and abject, barked at by the curs in the street; elegant hearse sledges with musical bells marking a winter funeral; frozen milk sold in the markets in cabbage nets: such vignettes attest to his sharp eye. Anecdotes of river travel up the Ottawa, down the St. Lawrence to Kamouraska, by the Nottawasaga to Lake Huron, are capped by stories of rougher travel North of Lake Superior." (Waterston).
Price: $1,250.00