DOWN THE WILD RIVER NORTH

Leslie Frewin, London, 1969, 1^st thus.  ISBN 0-09-096340-7.  Hard cover, 304 pages.  Very good; binding sound with a slight lean, bit of spine end wear.  Price-clipped dust jacket has edge and corner wear, some short tears and tears repaired on verso; some creases and rubs.  Book interior clean and unmarked; black & white illustrations.  ‘Armed with maps, a tent, and a twenty-foot freight canoe, Constance Helmericks and her two daughters, Jean, fourteen, and Ann, twelve, set out to explore the great wilderness in North America – the Canadian northwest.  They follow the Peace River through largely uninhabited territory into the greatest river system in Canada:  a vast chain of rivers and lakes, rapids and swamps, whose tortuous course rambles northwestward from the middle of Alberta to the Arctic Coast just east of Alaska.  And almost as extraordinary as their experiences were the people they met; each meeting is recounted in all its humour, strangeness or – sometimes – pathos.’ (from front flap)