FIRST EDITION OF FERGUSSON’S ADVENTURE SPORT AND TRAVEL ON THE TIBETAN STEPPES, 1911, WITH TWO FOLDING MAPS OF CHINA AND 27 PHOTOGRAPHIC PLATES OF CHINA AND TIBET

(CHINA) FERGUSSON, W.N. Adventure Sport and Travel on the Tibetan Steppes. London: Constable, 1911. Large octavo, original pictorial green cloth, uncut. $1400.

First edition, with two folding maps, 27 photographic plates of China, Tibet, and their inhabitants, and 48 in-text photographic illustrations, in original pictorial cloth.

This work is based primarily on the diaries and photographs of John Weston Brooke, who journeyed through Tibet and China beginning in 1906. Brooke did most of his traveling with a companion, C.H. Meares, whose writings also supplemented this volume. Indeed, Meares would have been the rightful editor of Brooke’s diaries. However, Meares was preparing for the Scott Antarctic expedition and had left to buy sled dogs when it was discovered that John Brooke had been murdered by Nosu tribesmen. Instead, the retrieval of Brooke’s body and the editing of his diaries fell to W.N. Fergusson. Though not an official member of Brooke and Meares’ traveling party, Fergusson had encountered the pair frequently in his own travels and journeyed with them through much of Western China. Though Brooke’s edited diaries reveal many of the biased attitudes and poor traveling behaviors characteristic of British travelers of the period, this work offers valuable information on Tibet and surrounding environs—areas that had been cut off from Westerners for many years.

Marginal closed tear to folding map of Se-Chuan, slight wormholing to preliminaries, only slightest rubbing and tiny cloth repair to spine of book. A near-fine copy.