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Scarce 1840 Tourist Guide to the Northwest, Mid-Atlantic and South, with Maps 

First edition of this splendid early travel guide to the United States. The North American Tourist is sometimes styled as a later edition of Melish's Traveller's Manual published in 1831, but it is really a different book, as the earlier title did not have maps or plates.

Howes states about the present undated edition that "some authorities give [it] precedence on the belief of its having appeared in 1839 [apparently based on 1839-dated copyright statement], but the maps in all three editions bear 1840 dates."

John Melish’s The North American Tourist is a pioneering American guidebook, issued at a moment when domestic travel was becoming increasingly accessible to the public. Emerging in the wake of the financial crises of the late 1830s, when the nation suffered an economic depression caused by the Panic of 1837, the guide reflects renewed middle-class interest in travel and mobility. Drawing on Melish’s experience as a noted map publisher, the book offers detailed practical information on transportation routes - stage lines, steamboats, railroads - along with distances, accommodations, and notable sites. It features engraved city maps of major centers including New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Baltimore, and a series of fine engraved views of New York City. There is also a substantial section devoted to the South, including descriptions of the old stage route from Norfolk to Charleston, "Rail-roads in Alabama," New Orleans (and routes from there), Mobile, Pensacola ("the white sand, dazzling the eyes almost to blindness in the hot season, is annoying, but the regular land and sea breezes are pleasant to mitigate the sultriness"), "Scenery and natural curiosities in Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, and East Tennessee."

In sum, The North American Tourist stands as one of the earliest comprehensive American travel guides, marking the rise of a new culture of domestic tourism in the antebellum period.

The four plates and geological section are:

• Governor's Island from the Battery (frontispiece)
• U.S. Hotel on Fulton Street in New York
• Palisade Rocks, Hudson River
• View at the Little Falls, Mohawk River
• The fifth "view" is a geological section that appears on the large folding sheet (along with 4 maps): A Geological Section of the Country from the Neighbourhood of Sandy Hook in New Jersey Northward toward the Highlands in New York towards the Catskill Mountains.

The 12 maps (on 9 sheets) are as follows, variously by Melish and engraved by Benjamin Tanner, J. Atwood, J. Vallance.

• New York and adjacent country.
• Ballston & Saratoga Springs, City of Albany and adjacent country
• Boston and adjacent country
• Philadelphia and adjacent country
• Baltimore, Annapolis and adjacent country
• View of the Country round the Falls of Niagara
• District of Columbia
• Charleston and adjacent country
• [3-part map of the course of the Connecticut River on "geological section" sheet]
• [Providence harbor on "geological section" sheet]
• [Hudson River and Westchester County on "geological section" sheet]
• [Boston harbor, Merrimack River, and environs on "geological section" sheet]