8vo. xii, 284 pp., half-title, 4 full-colour folding maps, 34 b/w plates including a frontispiece, contemporary red cloth, lightly soiled and rubbed round edges, title gilt on spine, index, previous owner’s name in pencil on half title page, front fly leaf partly detached, otherwise copy in good condition, Macmillan, London, first edition, 1897.

Synopsis

Two editions of this work appeared in the same year. An intriguing account by this Grenadier Guard travelling through Asia Minor and the Middle East to investigate the aftermath of the first Armenian Massacres from 1894-1896. The author who would subsequently serve as the British Intelligence Officer during the Boxer Rebellion in China, travelled extensively through the Ottoman Empire to many of the Armenian and Kurdish Regions, and then onto Iran, Iraq, Central Asia, and finally trekked across into Western China, before taking the Trans-Siberian Railway route to England.
Bigham, 2nd Viscount Mersey, was the eldest son of the noted British jurist, John Bigham 1st Viscount Mersey, who is best remembered for overseeing the RMS Titanic sinking inquiry. His observations encompass horrendous travelling conditions, illness, the mood of the inhabitants as he travels through the fraying Ottoman Empire.