Oct 27, 2020 - Sale 2549

Sale 2549 - Lot 196

Price Realized: $ 344
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
Hittell, Theodore H. (1830-1917)
The Adventures of James Capen Adams, Mountaineer and Grizzly Bear Hunter of California.

San Francisco: Towne & Bacon, 1860.

First edition, octavo, 378 pages, illustrated with portrait frontispiece of "Grizzly" Adams (1812-1860) bound opposite the title, and eleven plates of Adams and his exploits with wild animals by Eastman & Loomis after Charles Nahl's drawings; bound in publisher's textured and blind stamped brown cloth boards, titled in gilt on spine with decorative blind stamping, slight wear at head and tail, with book ticket of D.H.T. Mosse, bookseller, stationer, and news dealer on Kearny Street in San Francisco, 7 1/2 x 4 1/2 in.

Cowan p. 284; Graff 1912; Greenwood 1274; Howes H543; Wagner-Camp 348:1; Zamorano Eighty 42.

Adams was a famous grizzly bear trainer from California. Born in Massachusetts, he started as a cobbler, but always loved the outdoors and was also an expert trapper, trainer, and collector of wild animals in New England. He went west during the the California Gold Rush in 1849, caught wild bears, trained them, and lived with them.