Brackenridge's Journal of a voyage up the river Missouri, 1811; Franchère's Voyage to Northwest Coast, 1811-1814

This volume gathers two early travel narratives that chronicle western river and Pacific-coast voyages documenting early western and coastal exploration. One account records a keel-boat journey up the Missouri, combining landscape and natural-history observation with scenes of frontier commerce, encounters with Indigenous peoples, and the practical hardships of long river travel. The other narrative follows a transoceanic and coastal voyage leading to an early settlement on the Northwest coast, describing navigation, geography, survival challenges, and relations with local populations. Editorial introductions, appendices, illustrations, and distance tables supply documentary context and annotations.