An English Earl in the Himalayas
DUNMORE, Charles Adolphus Murray, Earl of.
The Pamirs; being a Narrative of a Year’s Expedition on Horseback and on Foot through Kashmir, western Tibet, Chinese Tartary, and Russian Central Asia … London, John Murray, ‘1893’ [1894].
Two vols, 8vo, I: pp. xx, 360, with frontispiece, 9 plates, and folding map, II: pp. x, [2], 352, with frontispiece, 3 plates, and 2 folding maps; numerous illustrations in-text; overall a very good set in the original pale blue watered silk, spines and boards lettered in silver, silver vignette to upper covers, decorated endpapers; spine and edges of boards sunned; near-contemporary armorial bookplates of Clement J. Carroll, with his stamp from Rocklow House at Fethard in Co. Tipperary, Ireland, in various places at the beginning and end of each volume.
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The Pamirs; being a Narrative of a Year’s Expedition on Horseback and on Foot through Kashmir, western Tibet, Chinese Tartary, and Russian Central Asia …
Second edition (first 1893) recounting the major 1892–3 expedition through the Himalayas and central Asia by the Earl of Dunmore.
‘A man of powerful physique, Dunmore travelled in many parts of the world, including Africa and the Arctic regions; but his chief fame as an explorer rests on a year’s journey made in 1892 in company with Major Roche of the third dragoon guards through Kashmir, Western Thibet, Chinese Tartary and Russian Central Asia. They started from Rawal Pindi on 9 April 1892, and remained together till 12 Dec., when they parted at Kashgar in Chinese Turkestan. Major Roche, having no passport for the Central Asian frontier, then returned to India, while Dunmore continued his route westward through Ferghana and Transcaspia, reaching Samarcand towards the end of January 1893. He had ridden and walked 2500 miles, traversing forty-one mountain passes and sixty-nine rivers. On 3 July 1893 he read a paper on his experiences before the Royal Geographical Society (Geog. Journ. ii. 385), and in the same year published an account of his exploration in “The Pamirs”’ (DNB).
Dunmore’s account highlights the daring and dangers of an expedition through inhospitable and occasionally uncharted terrain and contains over fifty illustrations, plans, and diagrams, the majority modelled after Dunmore’s own sketches.