The Discovery of the Ancient City of Norumbega

Cambridge, Mass: Privately Printed, 1889. Numbered, Limited. Hard Cover. One of 250 copies only (none of which for sale); this is an out of sequence copy without number or presentation appearing on the limitation page. Large quarto in brick-colored cloth lettered in gilt; 63 pps. Illustrated with photographic plates including a portrait of the author, Seven folding tissue maps of various sizes plus two additional single-leaf tissue maps and one additional plate. Privately printed as a communication to the president and council of the American Geographical Society. Horsford claimed to have identified the location of the ancient Norse city of Norumbega on the Charles River near present day Watertown, Massachusetts. He postulated that the city was built and used as the seat of extensive fisheries and setlement by Norse explorers who journeyed to North America some 500 years before Columbus, and that the site was later occupied in the 1400s by the Bretons. Also contains the original poem "Norumbega" by John G. Whittier and a number of other related verse pieces. A particularly clean, tight, bright example, some offsetting to the endpapers. 4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall.