Description: A rare and important piece of publishing history. Zadok Cramer was a Pittsburgh printer and bookbinder who in 1801 began publishing the best known of the early river guides, The Navigator. (No copies of this 1801 edition exist today) Cramer originally intended it as a handbook for western immigrants, but it became the bible for early flatboatmen and keelboatmen, many of whom went on to become steamboat pilots on the Mississippi. This edition marks the first appearance in book form of an account of Louisiana and of the Missouri and Columbia rivers as discovered under the voyage of Captains Lewis and Clark. Pages 146-156 give a summary of the discoveries of Lewis and Clark gleaned from a letter written by William Clark to one of his brothers in Louisville and from Patrick Gass’s Journal.
 
The Book: A good or better copy of The Navigator: Containing directions for navigating the Monangohela, Allegheny, Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. This is the stated sixth edition but is in fact the fourth after those editions of 1802,1804 and 1806. ***The copy is missing one of the Preliminary Pages that includes the plate of "The Map of Pittsburgh" and the "April 1808 Letter from the Editor" on the verso. (See the attached photo above) Condition: 12mo. 126 pages - Features twenty-eight full-page wood cut maps. Period marbled boards with a new leather spine, leather spine label and refreshed endpapers. Wear to the edges and corners of the marbled paper boards, pages tanned with heavy foxing throughout. A few pages have been trimmed with a small tear to the lower right corners of pages 71 and 147. A very faint imprint of an old library stamp is visible on the upper copyright page and along the bottom of page 156 with no other library markings visible. Overall, a very presentable copy. 
 
The Navigator eventually would be published in twelve editions with the final edition printed in 1824. These early editions from 1808 and before are becoming quite rare, with only a small handful available in the marketplace. 
 
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