tram’s and the Marquis de Chastellux’s travels; and in my account of Pennsylvania, I have made use of Marshal’s Arbustrum
Americanum, in the description of a few trees and shrubs . . .
This is the first Gazetteer of the United States, compiled by Joseph Scott, the compiler also of the
Universal Gazetteer
, q.v. In his preface he states that “. . . when we reflect that no gazetteer has ever been published of the United States,
I may with some degree of justice say, I have ‘trodden an unbeaten path;’ and to possess a presence and comprehension of mind,
capable of embracing such a variety of objects, and all the particulars relating to each, is perhaps the lot of few . . .
The maps I have drawn and engraved myself, and I trust they will be found, on examination, as accurate as circumstances would
admit, and probably more so than any collection of maps that has hitherto been published of the United States . . .”
For a note on Joseph Scott, see no. 3840.
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55
Chastellux’ Voiages in America.
2. v.
8
vo.
1815 Catalogue, page 122, no. 174, as above, but reading
Voyages.
CHASTELLUX,
François Jean, Marquis de.
Travels in North-America, in the Years 1780, 1781, and 1782. By the Marquis de Chastellux, One of the Forty Members of the French Academy, and Major General in the French Army, serving under the Count de Rochambeau.
Translated from the
French by an English Gentleman, who resided in America at that Period. With Notes by the Translator . . . Volume I. [-II.]
London: Printed for
G. G. J. and J. Robinson,
m dcc lxxxvii
. [1787.]
E163 .C54
First Edition of this translation. 2 vol. 8vo. 240 and 222 leaves, the last leaf in Vol. I a blank, maps and plates taken from
the original
French edition.
Halkett and Laing VI, 81 [translated by John Kent, with Sabin as the authority].
Sabin 12229 [the translator was J. Kent].
Entered by Jefferson in his undated manuscript catalogue with the price
4.0.
For a note on Chastellux, see no. 4020.
This translation has been ascribed to John Kent, and to George Greive [or Grieve]. It is attributed to Kent, one of the claimants
to the authorship of the Letters of Junius, in the British Museum Catalogue, by Watt, Sabin and other bibliographers. George
Greive, to whom the translation is ascribed by John Goldworth Alger in the Dictionary of National Biography, is said to be
that George Greive chiefly known as the persecutor of Madame Du Barry. He seems to have been in America during the years 1780
to 1782, but the account in the Dictionary of National Biography contains the passage: “On Robespierre’s fall [in 1794] Grieve
was arrested at Amiens, and was taken to Versailles, where twenty-two depositions were taken against him, but the prosecution
was dropped. Returning to America, he resided at Alexandria, Virginia, and published in 1796 a translation of Chastellux’s
‘Travels.’”
The translation was published in London in 1787 and not in America in 1796. The chief source of information for those who
subscribe to the theory that Greive was the author, is a letter from J. Hammond Trumbull of Hartford, Conn., addressed on March 29, 1869, to the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, President of the
Massachusetts Historical Society, in whose Proceedings it is published, vol. XI, page 5, 1871. This letter does not connect
Greive with the Madame Du Barry persecution.
In 1786, David Humphreys was contemplating the translation into English of Chastellux’s book. On March 17, on the eve of his
departure from Paris to the United States, he wrote to Jefferson, and mentioned:“. . . I have begun to translate the Travels of the Marquis de Chattelux in America, & expect to make some progress during
my voyage to that Continent . . .”
It was this letter which occasioned Jefferson’s remark on the criticism of Chastellux’s work quoted above.
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