STEAMBOAT PILOT'S GUIDE TO THE MISSISSIPPI and OHIO 1834

Samuel Cumings. The Western Pilot; containing Charts of the Ohio River, and of the Mississippi, from the mouth of the Missouri to the Gulf of Mexico; accompanied with Directions for Navigating the same, and a Gazetteer, or Description of the Towns on their Banks, Tributary Streams, etc., also a variety of matter interesting to travellers, and all those concerned in the navigation of those rivers. Cincinnati: Guilford, 1834. Revised edition (pp. 150). Small folio (22cm) in half leather over paper-covered boards, titles in black on front cover; illustrated with a series of strip maps or charts. Corners worn through with some loss, covers generally worn (titles still readable); endpapers stained with several worm holes; text stained and foxed in varying degrees throughout. A well-used copy of the standard guide for river pilots working the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, an adaptation or continuation of Zadok Cramer’s book for pilots (last published 1822), beginning in 1824 and published with updates at least until the Civil War when commercial river traffic was shut down.  Shows the various islands, shoals, and  other assorted hazards giving directions for navigating  a river steamboat among them. An earlier edition of the guide Samuel Clemens consulted during his time as a Mississippi river pilot (c. 1857-61), it is an artefact of river boating and has spent a season or so in the wheelhouse, and looks it.