Report intended to illustrate a map of the hydrographical basin of the upper Mississippi River, made by I. N. Nicollet, while in employ under the bureau of the corps of topographical engineers

EX LIBRIS JOHN HENRY ALEXANDER, CHIEF CARTOGRAPHER OF MARYLAND -- EXTRA-ILLUSTRATED WITH FRÉMONT'S OREGON AND CALIFORNIA MAP. First edition, Senate issue; 26th Congress, 2d Session, document 237. Octavo (8 11/16" x 5 3/4", 222mm x 146mm). [Full collation available.] With two large folding engraved maps (of one; with Preuss’s lithographed "Map of Oregon and Upper California From the Surveys of John Charles Frémont And other Authorities" published for the Senate in 1848 by E. Weber and Co. in Baltimore; with hand-color in outline.) Bound in slightly later maroon cloth. On the spine, author and title gilt to black sheep with double gilt fillets top-and-bottom. Hinges split, with some fraying to the head and tail. Spine sunned. Rubbed, with a little wear at the corners. Foxed, generally mildly. With the ink ownership signature of "I. H. Alexander" along with (his?) monogram red ink-stamp and manuscript shelf-mark ("44.x.20.c") to the title-page. Ink manuscript titling of the Preuss map verso in an old hand (Alexander's?). Joseph Nicolas Nicollet (or Jean-Nicolas; 1786-1843) was a French-born mathematician and astronomer who, before his emigration to the Unites States in 1832, was professor of astronomy at the Paris Observatory and professor of mathematics at the Collège Louis-le-Grand. Nicollet set off first up the Mississippi on a commercial endeavor, which resulted in the correction of Zebulon Pike's map of the river, which had been the primary source of knowledge of its course since 1810. As a result, Nicollet was employed by the Corps of Topographical Engineers to revise official maps of the trans-Mississippi West. Although poor health prevented him from expanding his survey through the Missouri River, and he died a few months before the publication of the present work, his map -- drawn by the great William Helmsley Emory -- supplemented with a scientific analysis of his surveying models and even a précis of natural history in the areas he traversed -- is one of the great achievements of American cartography. For his contributions, Nicollet is buried in the Congressional Cemetery. The House issue of the report was accompanied by a smaller map, and so the Senate issue has always been the more desirable, even by the members of the House of Representatives. The present example is extra-illustrated with the John Charles Frémont's perhaps equally consequential map, which dates to the end of the Mexican-American War and the cession of 55% of Mexico's territory, yielding the entirety of California, Nevada and Utah, most of Arizona and New Mexico and part of Colorado and Wyoming. Later states of the map printed one of the first announcements of the discovery of gold in California, leading directly to the Gold Rush of 1849. The juxtaposition of these two maps (Frémont accompanied Nicollet on his second expedition) in the present volume must surely be the work of John Henry Alexander (1812-1867), who at the age of twenty-one was commissioned by the Maryland General Assembly to survey and map the whole of its state for topographical and census purposes. (Arader handled the original manuscript sheets of that survey.) Later in life he was professor of civil engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and of physics at the University of Maryland. He and Nicollet likely knew each other and perhaps even worked together (both being cartographers in the employ of the government working in Baltimore). Graff 3022; Howes N 152; Schwartz & Ehrenberg, pp. 265-68 and pl. 165; Sabin 55257; Streeter sale III:1808; Wagner-Camp-Becker 98; Wheat, Transmississippi West II, p. 180.