4to. xxvii, [2], 799 pp., wood engraved illustrations in text / xvi, 778 pp., tables including 2 large folding charts, appendices, indices, professionally repaired with new modern hard back binding, gilt lettering on spine, new endpapers, light toning to pages, frail outer edges of preliminary leaves in volume two, LACKING the plates and the maps, reflected in price, text complete, trail of few worm holes towards the end of volume one index, affecting the odd characters, a good set otherwise considering its age, Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, first edition, 1850.

Synopsis

Francis Rawdon Chesney (1789-1872) was sent to China before he finished writing the history of this expedition and half the manuscript was lost. This also accounts for the odd numbering of the plates; 97 were intended for the full work of which only 49 were actually printed, not in numerical order. Chesney was the ‘founder of the overland route to India’ (Dictionary of National Biography.) In 1829 he set out for Constantinople intending to take part in the Russo-Turkish War; instead he made a tour of inspection in Lebanon, Syria and Egypt which had two results – the overland route to India and the Suez Canal (de Lesseps was led to attempt the enterprise after reading Chesney’s report).
In 1831 Chesney carried out his preliminary survey of the Euphrates alone, floating down the river on a raft. A parliamentary committee recommended a full-scale expedition, and two steamships were assembled near Bir in 1835, near the property of John Barker. During the voyage the S. S. Tigris sank and after many difficulties the S. S. Euphrates finally reached Basra. Chesney’s history of the expedition includes minute surveys of history, geography, geology of the areas traversed, but does not provide a day-by-day account of the expedition. This is the concluding portion of Chesney’s account, which was originally lost in China.
References: Blackmer 337; Atabey 234; Marlowe, `Perfidious Albion’ pp 216-18; Searight, pp 121-4; Hilmy I, 133.