MACKENZIE, Alexander (1764-1820). Voyages from Montreal, on the River St. Laurence, through the continent of North America to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans, in the years 1789 and 1793. London: T. Cadell and W. Davies; Corbett and Morgan, 1801.

4to (276 x 210mm). With the errata leaf. Engraved portrait frontispiece, 3 folding engraved maps (browned and with some staining, frontispiece offset to title, maps with long repaired tears, offsetting and bound upside-down). Contemporary calf (rebacked preserving the spine, browned later endpapers). Provenance: George Simpson (1786/7?-1860; canceled ownership inscription on title); Hudson's Bay Company, London (title-page inscription above previous signature); Prentice Bloedel (his sale, PBA Galleries, 14 November 1996); Martin L. Greene (booklabel), a notable polar collector; his sale, Christie's New York, 7 December 2017, lot 116.

HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY COPY OF THE FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST DOCUMENTED CROSSING OF NORTH AMERICA, sponsored by their bitter rivals, the North West Company. George Simpson, whose name appears here crossed out on the title-page, was appointed Governor-in-Chief of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1820 and oversaw its period of greatest power. Early on, Simpson's uncle Geddes Mackenzie Simpson was a partner in the London sugar brokerage firm of Graham and Simpson that employed his young nephew in 1808. The firm would soon merge with Wedderburn and Company in 1812 and thus the lifelong connection between Simpson and the Hudson's Bay Company which Andrew Colville (née Wedderburn) would soon become a board member of and was largely responsible for sending out Simpson to take charge of HBC affairs in Canada. Simpson, also a noted explorer, was the first person known to have circumnavigated the world by land and still holds the longest North American canoe journey ever made in one season traversing 5,000 miles with his dog, mistress and personal piper.

Mackenzie, a Scots fur trader, emigrated to North America in 1779 and was employed by the North West Company. In what is now the province of Alberta, Mackenzie and a cousin set up a trading post, Fort Chipewyan, on Lake Athabasca in 1788. This was the starting point of his expedition of 1789. The route followed the Mackenzie River from the Great Slave Lake to the river's delta on the Arctic Ocean. Mackenzie crossed the Rocky Mountains in 1793 from Fort Chipewyan to the Pacific coast of what is now British Columbia. Together these journeys constitute the first known transcontinental crossing of America north of Mexico. The work includes important vocabularies of the Knisteneaux, Algonquin, Chipewyan, Hegailer and Atnah Indian languages. Shortly after Simpson joined The Hudson Bay Company, it merged with the North West Company. Field 967; Graff 2630; Hill 1063; Lande 1317; Pilling 2384; Sabin 43414; TPL 658; Streeter Sale VI:3653; Wagner-Camp 1:1; Wheat 251.