Being an Account of the First Passage across the Rocky Mountains of North America Ever Achieved by Civilized Man
This is an unfinished serial novel, of which only six installments were published in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine’s January through June issues in 1840. At the time, Poe was a contributing editor of the journal. He was fired in June 1840 by William Burton and refused to continue the novel. In 1840, members of the United States Senate believed the story to be a true account. Robert Greenhow (1800–1854), a native of Richmond, Virginia whose family may have known Poe, wrote a paragraph about the work in U.S. Senate Document of the 26th Congress, entitled “Memoir, Historical and Political, on the Northwest Coast of North America, and the Adjacent Territories; Illustrated by a Map and a Geographical View of Those Countries”. The document stated, “It is proper to notice here an account of an expedition across the American continent, made between 1791 and 1794, by a party of citizens of the United States, under the direction of Julius Rodman, whose journal has been recently discovered in Virginia, and is now in course of publication in a periodical magazine at Philadelphia.” Greenhow admitted that the full expedition had not yet been completely reported. This unintended “hoax” on the U.S. Senate suggests Poe’s ability to add credibility to his fiction.