Unexplored Baluchistan. A Survey, with observations astronomical, geographical, botanical, etc., of a route through Mekran, Bashkurd, Persia, Kurdistan, and Turkey -
Ernest Ayscoghe Floyer
1882 - Griffith &, London - First Edition
For a year and a half beginning in 1876, English explorer, linguist and telegraph official Ernest Ayscoghe Floyer explored the desert plateau spanning modern-day Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, an area known at the time as Baluchistan.
Housed in a bespoke leather tipped green moire silk covered slipcase, and illustrated with a fold-out colour map of the author’s route, a portrait frontispiece and eleven illustrations (ten full-page and one in-text).
This rare first edition traces Floyer’s journeys from Jask to Bampur, through the Persian Gulf, and from Jask to Kerman via Angohran. It has a map as well as appendices on the dialects of western Baluchistan and plants Floyer collected on his travels, and is the book that established Floyer as an explorer.
The preface is by Sir Frederic Goldsmid, the man who helped establish the boundaries of the British empire in Baluchistan, and for whom the nearly 1000-kilometre Iran-Pakistan border – also known as the ‘Goldsmid Line’ – is named. Floyer’s travels began as a sabbatical and a way to recover his health after ‘some years’ hard service in the Persian Gulf.’ - ‘I was granted my long deferred privilege leave by Her Majesty’s Government, and cast about for the best way of making the most of it.’ - ‘I had long wanted to see what was on the other side of the range of mountains which runs down this Mekran coast on which I had spent so many years.’ - After three days ‘ransacking the country for camels’ he set off with a mullah, a Goan cook, a local boy and a gun man, camel men, and a small dog.
Floyer was stationed in the Persian Gulf with the Indian telegraphic service for seven years. He was later appointed inspector-general of Egyptian telegraphs, cultivated trees and plants for fibre and telegraph poles, was put in charge of extracting deposits of sodium nitrate he discovered in Egypt, and found abandoned emerald mines as he surveyed the desert between the Nile and Red Sea.
Provenance: Signed H.W. Evans. Inserted loosely at page 240 was a photograph of an outdoor laundry, now in archival sleeve at the front.
References: Howgego, Raymond John, Encyclopedia of Exploration 1850 to 1940 Continental Exploration.
Large octavo (book size 25x16.8cm), pp. xvii [3] 507 [1]. In publisher’s green cloth, spine lettered in gilt and decorated in red and black lines, front board with black and red patterns, green coated endpapers. Condition: Internally fine but for some offsetting to pages 101 and 225, and short tear to map stub at rear, in very good cloth, spine with rubbing and some loss to gilt, higes split but strong, inner hinges cracked. Ref: 112023 Price: HK$ 6,000
Housed in a bespoke leather tipped green moire silk covered slipcase, and illustrated with a fold-out colour map of the author’s route, a portrait frontispiece and eleven illustrations (ten full-page and one in-text).
This rare first edition traces Floyer’s journeys from Jask to Bampur, through the Persian Gulf, and from Jask to Kerman via Angohran. It has a map as well as appendices on the dialects of western Baluchistan and plants Floyer collected on his travels, and is the book that established Floyer as an explorer.
The preface is by Sir Frederic Goldsmid, the man who helped establish the boundaries of the British empire in Baluchistan, and for whom the nearly 1000-kilometre Iran-Pakistan border – also known as the ‘Goldsmid Line’ – is named. Floyer’s travels began as a sabbatical and a way to recover his health after ‘some years’ hard service in the Persian Gulf.’ - ‘I was granted my long deferred privilege leave by Her Majesty’s Government, and cast about for the best way of making the most of it.’ - ‘I had long wanted to see what was on the other side of the range of mountains which runs down this Mekran coast on which I had spent so many years.’ - After three days ‘ransacking the country for camels’ he set off with a mullah, a Goan cook, a local boy and a gun man, camel men, and a small dog.
Floyer was stationed in the Persian Gulf with the Indian telegraphic service for seven years. He was later appointed inspector-general of Egyptian telegraphs, cultivated trees and plants for fibre and telegraph poles, was put in charge of extracting deposits of sodium nitrate he discovered in Egypt, and found abandoned emerald mines as he surveyed the desert between the Nile and Red Sea.
Provenance: Signed H.W. Evans. Inserted loosely at page 240 was a photograph of an outdoor laundry, now in archival sleeve at the front.
References: Howgego, Raymond John, Encyclopedia of Exploration 1850 to 1940 Continental Exploration.
Large octavo (book size 25x16.8cm), pp. xvii [3] 507 [1]. In publisher’s green cloth, spine lettered in gilt and decorated in red and black lines, front board with black and red patterns, green coated endpapers. Condition: Internally fine but for some offsetting to pages 101 and 225, and short tear to map stub at rear, in very good cloth, spine with rubbing and some loss to gilt, higes split but strong, inner hinges cracked. Ref: 112023 Price: HK$ 6,000