Monday, September 22, 2014

S23: Tillicums of the Trail

For the most part, this Biblio-Mat offering looks like a run of the mill turn of the century Canadian exploration book, and it is. However, it does contain a nice little morsel of history within its pages.

Might've been original in the 1920's?

Title: Tillicums of the Trail

Written by George C. F. Pringle and published in 1922, Tillicums of the Trail looks and feels like a book that’s nearing a hundred years old. With 253 faded acid-washed pages sandwiched between burnt orange cloth covers, it begs to be written off as another one of those books that are old enough to garner some sort of respect, but not interesting enough to actually pick up. That is, until you open it.

Like a tree, it is!

After a certain incident, I try to stay as far away from any books with “Trail” in the title but this one did pique my curiosity in that I had no idea what a Tillicum was outside of the name of one of the orcas in Blackfish. Looking it up, it turns out Tillicum is a Chinook word meaning people/family/tribe. Interesting, but not interesting enough to actually spend time reading through it for me.

Couldn't have designed it better.

What I did notice opening the book off the bat was that there is a water stain on the inside cover that bled through the first thirty pages, creating a gorgeous ring design that will no doubt be appropriated for one of my future design projects.

Klondike - much better in ice cream form.

The second, even more fascinating, thing I discovered is that the book is signed by the author and given away with an inscription on the inside cover.

Yep, that's a writer's scrawl.

The handwriting is as you would expect from a writer and it appears to say:

Mr. M. Macdonald –

For the sake of his good Scotish name and in appreciation of a kind(?) reception at the N. P. Cover(?) in Sept. 1923 with the author’s compliments.

George C. F> Pringle

Vauandes(?) BC.

Oct 1923


Inscriptions are always a fun find but ones written by the author seem to add so much more value to the book as a piece of history. Interesting for sure, but still probably won’t read it.

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