With a Fine Engraved Map of the United States with the Oregon Country
A very nice example of Morse's scarce Universal Atlas, first published in 1822 (but with only 22 maps).
This is the first edition to include U.S. State maps.
This atlas includes an early double page coast to coast maps of the United States to appear in a commercial atlas, which first appeared in Morse's 1823 An Atlas of the United States on an Improved Plan. Fielding Lucas Jr. also did a double sheet map of the United States at that time. Wheat praises Morse's United States map:
This beautifully engraved map includes the Oregon country with the overly-long "Multnomah of Wallaumut" River and with no northern boundary shown. In 1825 the same map was included in A New Universal Atlas of the World, on an Improved Plan (New Haven, 1825).
The atlas is also notable as an early American atlas to include a map devoted to Pacific region. This map is titled, simply and appropriately, Pacific Ocean, and shows the Pacific coast of North and South America (including the California coast) richly outlined in green. Also shown in this map: Australia (called New Holland), New Zealand, Japan, Melanesia and Polynesia, and part of China.
Each map includes an index of place names opposite the map, another early innovation.
The 1820s was a golden age for American Cartography, with a number of atlases published by Carey & Lea, Anthony Finley, Fielding Lucas, Sidney Morse and others.
Phillips describes this atlas with only 30 maps and 27 index leaves, but the example offered here has 31 maps and 29 index leaves (the two-sheet U.S. map and the double hemisphere world map were not issued with an index leaf of placenames).