Henry James Warre, a Captain in the Royal Engineers, is known for sketching disputed territory. In the mid-19th century he and a colleague traveled incognito through the Pacific Northwest and into Canada, only realizing upon their return to Great Britain that the United States and England had concluded their dispute as they had been traveling.

Realizing that his spycraft was no longer of strategic importance, Warre published a curated selection of his work as a carefully worded narrative illustrated with prints based on his many watercolors and drawings.

Today this publication, and the artwork on which it was based, remain vivid and significant documentation of a particularly tumultuous early period of American and Canadian history.