Travels Through North & South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges or Creek Confederacy and the Country of the Chactaws.

Philadelphia: James and Johnson, 1791. 8vo (195 x 115 mm), Contemporary tree calf, spine ruled in gilt and with gilt morocco label. [2], xxxiv, [2],522 pp. plus engraved frontispiece portrait of "Mico Chulcco the Long Warrior" by J. Trenchard after Bartram, engraved folding map, and seven engraved plates of natural history specimens (one folding). Several instances of early ink marginalia, almost certainly in the hand of Lawrence Washington (see below). In a half morocco slipcase and cloth chemise, spine gilt.

The rare first edition of one of the classic accounts of southern natural history and exploration, with much material on the southern Indian tribes.

This copy bears the ownership signature on the front free endpaper of Lawrence A. Washington (dated 1818), the nephew of George Washington. Lawrence Augustine Washington, (1775–1824), was the fourth son of George Washington's younger brother, Samuel. When Samuel Washington died in 1781, the future president took it upon himself to provide for the education of his nephew, Lawrence, and for Lawrence's older brother, George Steptoe Washington. Throughout the 1780s and early 1790s, Washington supervised and paid for their education in Alexandria, Virginia, and then at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, from which the two nephews graduated in 1792. While in Philadelphia, Lawrence Washington also studied law with Attorney General Edmund Randolph. He married Mary Dorcas Wood in 1797 and lived at Federal Hill, outside Winchester, Virginia. At George Washington's death Lawrence and his brother, George, were absolved of all debts for their schooling, a sum of approximately five thousand dollars. George Washington also left his nephews a small portion of his estate in his will.

For the period, Bartram's work is unrivalled. He travelled several thousand miles through the Southeast in the years just prior to the American Revolution. "...Bartram wrote with all the enthusiasm and interest with which the fervent old Spanish friars and missionaries narrated the wonders of the new found world...he neglected nothing which would add to the common stock of human knowledge"— Field. "Unequalled for the vivid picturesqueness of its descriptions of nature, scenery, and productions"—Sabin. "The classic of southern natural history and exploration, with much on the southern Indian tribes. Bartram's account of the remote frontier, of the plantations, trading posts, and Indian villages at the end of the eighteenth century is unrivaled"—Streeter. Includes a chapter concerning the customs and language of the Muscogulges and Cherokees.

REFERENCES: Howes B223, "b." Clark I:197. Evans 23159. Sabin 3870. Vail 849. Coats, The Plant Hunters, pp.273-76. Taxonomic Literature 329. Streeter Sale 1088. Field 94. Pilling, Proof-Sheets 301. Servies 669. Reese, Federal Hundred 33.

CONDITION: A good copy; binding rubbed, joints worn, front joint cracked (but holding), chipped at head of spine, frontispiece creased; one plate with a two-inch long vertical closed tear and with a small chip in the upper margin, above the neat line; folding plate torn in upper margin, not affecting the illustration; text tanned, with occasional staining and foxing.