8vo. vii, 272 pp., 12 pp., of Itinerary of Lieutenant Thomas Lumsden from Merut, in India to London, hand-coloured folding frontispiece engraved map, engraved plate, a little browned, contemporary full calf, slightly rubbed at corners & rebacked largely retaining back-strip, marbled endpaper and edges, bookplate of John Waldie verso front cover, occasional spotting mainly to margins, otherwise copy generally in good condition, printed for Black, Kingsbury, Parbury, & Allen, London, 1822.

Synopsis

SCARCE WORK. Lieutenant Thomas Lumsden was a commander attached to the Bengal Horse Artillery. He wrote daily entries for this work, in the course of a journey from India to London. Lumsden started his journey on 3rd October 1819 with the company of Lieutenant A. Cameron of the Bengal Horse Artillery and Dr Matthew Lumsden, who had a perfect knowledge of Arabic and Persian. He visited the town of Muscat, Bushire, then travelled through Persia, Armenia, Central Asia, Ukraine, Georgia, Caucasus, Russia, Poland, Germany, Austria, Switzrerland and Paris and ended his journey in England. When he arrived in Muscat in 1820 he made some political observations about the British relations with the Arabs of the Gulf.
He describes the contacts between the two in these words:
“Muscat is undoubtedly a thriving place, and likely to rise to far greater importance then it has yet attained; and I think it probable that the intercourse between the Arabians and the British in the continent of India, and the Asiatic settlements of the European nations, must ere long tend to enlighten the minds and ameliorate the conditions of the people of Arabia”. (p. 69).
Bibliographic reference: Not in Ghani.