Narrative of a journey across the Rocky Mountains, to the Columbia River Kindle Edition

In April 1834 Nathaniel Wyeth outfitted a new expedition to the northwest with the aim of establishing fur-trading posts, a salmon fishery, a colony and other developments. Joining him on this expedition were two noted naturalists, Professor Thomas Nuttall and John Kirk Townsend. They travelled with Wyeth across the vast landscape of the far west, collecting a recording new animals and plants that they saw along the way. Townsend’s record of that journey, Narrative of a journey across the Rocky Mountains, to the Columbia River, provides brilliant insight into this transcontinental trek through the eyes of a biologist. Unlike other accounts, diaries, or letters of adventurers who travelled west, including that of Wyeth himself, Townsend sheds light onto the flora and fauna of this vast unexplored territory in a way that was often overlooked by other explorers. As well as recording his journey westwards across the United States, Townsend also provides information on his return leg sailing on the Pacific via Hawaii and Chile. This book is essential reading for all who are interested in how the United States spread westwards through the course of the nineteenth century and to hear a journey of one of the explorers who paved the way for the famous Oregon Trail. John Kirk Townsend was an American naturalist, ornithologist and collector. In 1833, he was invited by the botanist Thomas Nuttall to join him on Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth's second expedition across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. Townsend’s book Narrative of a journey across the Rocky Mountains, to the Columbia River was first published in 1839 and he passed away in 1851. Read more