Ashe, Thomas; Travels in America, Performed in the Year 1806, for the Purpose of Exploring the Rivers Alleghany, Monongahela, Ohio, and Mississippi, and Ascertaining the Produce and Conditions of their Banks and Vicinity. London: Richard Phillips,  2nd printing, 1809. Octavo, pp. 316, 4.

The work is complete and in a later calf over cloth boards with gilt spine panels. The binding is tight and very clean. Minor toning to some text pages. Over all in very good condition.
FREE SHIPPING FOR ALL ITEMS.

Thomas Ashe (1770-1835), was born in Dublin, Ireland and was a soldier and memoirist. Much of his life was checkered with intrigue and fraud. His Memoirs and Confessions (1815) is an autobiographical account of ‘criminal and delinquent’ escapades beginning with the seduction of a girl in France. In America he edited the National Intelligencer, and was arrested when attempting to steal treasures from churches in Latin America.
His Travels in America first appeared in 1806. The narrative, chronicles Ashe's travels by flatboat down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers in 1806 and is one of the first travelogues written by a foreigner to comment specifically on the American inhabitants of the region. A unrestrained hatred of Americans can be found throughout the work. While the account is interesting and highly readable it was to  create quite a stir, and added to the wave of anti-British sentiment that would ultimately lead to the War of 1812.
The Edinburgh Review criticized Ashe's attitude and that just further aroused the bitterness that Americans felt for British travelers and English travel narratives.