Fine Books & Manuscripts

COLLOT, George Henri Victor (1752–1805). A General Map of the River Ohio… plate the first; second; third; fourth. Paris, 1804 [but issued in 1826]. 4 engraved plates by Tardieu (total length together 3,162 mm), old folds visible, mounted to board, browning or foxing mainly near edges, few corns worn. THE FINEST MAP OF THE UPPER OHIO RIVER OF THE TIME, compiled by Collot for his Voyage dans l’Amerique Septentrionale, which was one of the most important and exceedingly rare American cartographic works of the 18th century. In 1796, acting under the direction of the French Minister to the United States, Collot undertook a secret reconnaissance to survey the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. His task was to gauge the military situation on the Spanish and American frontier sides of the river, and whether the region could be retaken by France. Collot’s mission was successful as he produced a wealth of manuscript maps and views of the region, many of which contained never before recorded areas of this newly settled wilderness. He traveled from Pittsburgh down the Ohio to the Mississippi, up the Mississippi to the Missouri and Illinois Rivers, and then back down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Areas are shown in high detail, with Collot noting various ports, cities, “dangerous” areas, forts, military camps, depths of the river, settlements, and even noting “bones of an extraordinary size are found here” at the salt pits near Big Bone Creek in Kentucky. Collot was arrested several times during his journey including by the American officer Zebulon Pike and the Spanish government who were justifiably suspicious of his work but had no grounds to detain him. The maps were engraved in Paris in 1804 but the publication was suppressed due to Napoleon’s sale of the Louisiana territory to the United States which effectively ended any possibility that the region could be retaken again, but also Napoleon did not want to alert the Americans of the full scope of Collot’s espionage. The sheets of the book sat in a warehouse for two decades after Collot’s death in 1805 until they were purchased by Arthus Bertrand, a known French publisher of travels and voyages who deliberately destroyed sets (all but 100 copies of the English and 300 of the French) to make the book scarcer, issuing the remainder with new titles, introductory material, and the original 1804 sheets hoping to increase its value. This copy being the ONE OF 100 maps printed in English. The work is considered to be “ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS, MOST, IMPORTANT, AND RAREST OF MID–WESTERN EXPLORATIONS” (Cohen), “one of the great rarities of Americana” (Reese), and “the most detailed of the western interior up to his time” (Howes). Cohen, Mapping the West pp. 68–70; Howes C–601, “dd”; The Ohio River Atlas: A Collection of the Best Known Maps of the Ohio River from 1713 to 1954 pp. 25–29; Phillips, Atlases I:1214; Phillips, Maps of America p. 636; Reese, Best of the West 53; Sabin 14460; Streeter 1789; Wagner–Camp 31A; Wheat, Mapping the Transmississippi West 236.