Hewitt, Randall H. Across the Plains and Over the Divide : A Mule Train Journey from East to West in 1862, and Incidents connected therewith; With Map and Illustrations. New York: Broadway Publishing Co., 1906. "Second Edition" on backstrip. [11557]
Light blue cloth with red titles to spine & front, illustration of a mule-drawn wagon descending a steep narrow mountain road applied to front - illustration is scuffed and appears to have been applied twice - one can make out the edges of two applications. Binding with light wear and soil, 7 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches, good joints, tight. Text & plates counted and complete: frontispiece portrait of Christopher C. Hewitt, [i-vi], i-iii, [1]-521 clean pages, 12 pp. publisher's adverts. 58 plates (counting the frontispiece) with a folding map in perfect condition. This includes the plate "Variegated", facing p. 230, which Howes says is only in some copies. Good. Hardcover.
Howes H457 (aa rarity). Howes calls this the third edition, a greatly expanded edition of Hewitt's Notes by the way. Memorials of a Journey across the Plains... Olympia: 1863 [58 pages]; reprinted Olympia: 1872 (Howes 2nd edition); with our copy being the "ed. 3, greatly enl. by Judge Hewitt's nephew and namesake, with "Across the Plains and over the Divide..." NY [1906].
Wagner-Camp 391. "Traveled from St. Joe to Omaha, then via ft. Kearney, Ft. Laramie and the Lander Cut-off; then north through Deer Lodge and Bitter Root Valleys over the Mullan Military Road...This journal was expanded into a book of 521 pp....The book is full of shrewd observations."
Graff 1876. "One of the best Oregon Trail narratives."
Mintz 222. "This is a detailed overland narrative to the Northwest part of the nation via South Pass. Hewitt's narrative is a good example of the nation's early pathfinders. The author went from Ft. Laramie by way of the Lander cutoff through what is now Wyoming and over the Mullan Road to Columbia. Hewitt's journal is one of the few printed of an 1862 crossing. Only a half dozen or so copies of the first edition exist in complete form."
Flake 3973. The first edition is 3972: "Meets Mormon wagon trains, passes north of Salt Lake 'the kingdom of the Latter-day Saints or sinners.'" This edition 3973: "Encounters Mormon wagons on the trail, p. 77, 130-32, 139, 215-16." Hewitt condemns in no uncertain terms the foul language and behavior of the Mormon drivers, "A more sinister, brawling, profane gang would cut a throat or scuttle a ship, it would be difficult to collect together from the slums and cesspools of the universe...Fouler, viler and more blasphemous talk never in more continuous volume flowed from the lips of beings possessed of palates than came from those creatures, regardless of the decencies of life." - p. 89.
Randall Henry Hewitt (1840-1916), b. Seneca Falls, NY; d. Los Angeles, CA. Hewitt became a newspaper man in the Washington Territory, and at one time had an owner's interest in both the Territorial Republican and the Temperance Echo.
