HERIOT, George (1766-1844). Travels though the Canadas. London: T. Gillet for Richard Phillips, 1807.

First edition of "the earliest and most important aquatint book published on Canada" (Hill). As postmaster-general of British North America from 1799 to 1816, Heriot devoted himself to travel across Canada and the United States. He describes the fur trade, his voyages to the North, and cod fishery, devoting the second part of the text to a scholarly study of the Native peoples of the Americas, including Father Rasles's vocabulary of the Algonquin languages and other information drawn from Jesuit reports. This work also contains one of the best contemporary accounts of the Loyalist settlements in Canada. The fine illustrations are all after Heriot himself, and it was issued both in color and uncolored, as here. Hill 801; Sabin 31489; Streeter sale 3658 (colored); Streeter sale 3658; Abbey Travel 618 (plates only); see Prideaux, Aquatint Engraving, pp. 254-255.

Quarto (261 x 210mm). Without advertisements or instructions to the binder. Folding view of Quebec as frontispiece, hand-colored folding map, and 26 plates printed in black and bistre, 5 of which folding, the full-page plates mostly on fine, thin Whatman paper with visible watermarks to 1808 (offsetting from plates to text, neat repair to blank corner of title). 20th-century half calf with gilt monogram JMF, edges yellow (rebacked, endpapers renewed).