THE DANGEROUS RIVER.
London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., Ruskin House, Museum Street, [1954]. First Edition (& 1st printing). Octavo, original grey-green cloth lettered in black on spine panel, map endpapers. 160 pp., frontispiece and eight additional full-page plates reproducing black & white photographs, one full-page chart. spotting and browning to the fore-edges of the text block, a very good clean copy in the original colour pictorial dust jacket, lightly rubbed at edges, price corner intact. The jacket shows some foxing and browning, mostly on the rear panel and on the verso. Item #314442
¶ THE DANGEROUS RIVER describes two trips that R.M. Patterson took up the wild and remote Nahanni River in Canada's Northwest Territories in the late 1920s. At that time, there were only three other white men who dared to enter the entire region due to a legend about the murder of the McLeod brothers who had previously traveled deep into the area, found gold and were butchered in "Deadmen's Valley" by Indians. It's not easy to write a book about canoeing and portaging and hiking beside a river, building a cabin, shooting game for food and trapping animals for their fur AND make it into a page turner! R.M. Patterson has an incredible gift for description, for gentle humor and for writing about very mundane tasks and at the same time creating great interest in his activities. The New Yorker Magazine called this "a truly enchanting book."
Price (CAD): $85.00