The Great Lone Land: An Account of the Red River Expedition and Other Travels and Adventures in Western Canada

Author: Butler, William Francis

Illustrator:

Reference #: 1053

Status: Sold

List Price: $45.00

Edmonton: Hurtig, 1973. Second Printing Thus. 8vo;. Cloth. Near Fine / Fine; small bookplate on ffep (covering a p.o.n.?). 388 pp., including appendices; fold-out route map and illustrations. A reproduction of the original edition of 1872 published in London.

Butler was the Intelligence Officer assigned to the British Army in Western Canada. It was he who first advocated, in a written report to the Canadian government, the establishment of a force that came into being as the North West Mounted Police. This report is a classic of early travel and exploration of Western Canada, with interesting material on the fur trade, the Hudson’s Bay Company, and the authors meetings with and description of Indians of the plains.

Peel’s Bibliography of the Canadian Prairies (3rd Ed.), devotes a full column to its description of the first edition and its many early reprints (including this volume) and describes the work as “one of the travel classics of the West”. [Peel, 638] A handsome copy; out-of-print for some decades since the demise of Hurtig Publishers.