Lot 64: WARRE, HENRY JAMES, SIR. 1819-1898. Sketches in North America and the Oregon Territory. [London]: Dickinson & Co., [1848].

WARRE, HENRY JAMES, SIR. 1819-1898.
Sketches in North America and the Oregon Territory. [London]: Dickinson & Co., [1848].
Folio (527 x 360 mm). [ii], 5pp. 20 hand-colored lithographed views on 16 sheets, hand-colored engraved map. Contemporary burgundy morocco over cloth, spine lettered in gilt. Without dedication leaf which was not issued in all copies, light foxing, not affecting all plates, binding rubbed at corners and head and tail of spine, leather scuffed.
Provenance: William Rathbone (bookplate); Bauer, 1958, lot 508; Frank T. Siebert copy (lot 860 in his 1999 sale).

FIRST EDITION of one of the rarest and most desirable of North American color-plate books, described by Howes as "the only western color-plates comparable in beauty to those by Bodmer." Captain Warre was sent on reconnaissance as an agent of the British government to Oregon, at the time of the Oregon Boundary Dispute in which the sovereignty of the territory was contested between Great Britain and the United States. He set out from Montreal in 1845 on an expedition which lasted fourteen months, reaching Vancouver, Willamette Valley, the mouth of the Columbia River, Puget Sound, and Vancouver Island. By the time of his return to England the dispute had been settled for a border at 49 degrees. Abbey Travel 656; Graff 4543; Howes W-114 ("c"); Sabin 101455; Wagner-Camp 157.