[Item #60662] The Heart of a Continent: A Narrative of Travels in Manchuria, Across the Gobi Desert, Through the Himalayas, the Pamirs, and Chitral, 1884-1894. Third Edition. Frank E. YOUNGHUSBAND, Capt.

The Heart of a Continent: A Narrative of Travels in Manchuria, Across the Gobi Desert, Through the Himalayas, the Pamirs, and Chitral, 1884-1894. Third Edition.

London: John Murray, 1896. Third edition. Octavo; publisher's green cloth, decoratively titled in gilt on spine and front cover; xx,[1]-409pp; frontispiece portrait and 17 inserted leaves of plates (halftones); three folding maps inserted in the text, a fourth ("Map of the North Western Frontier of India Showing the Pamir Region and Part of Afghanistan") in rear pocket. Old (and apparently unnecessary) celo-tape reinforcements to hinges; small tape repair to rear map-pocket, but still an attractive, well-preserved copy, straight and sound, with text clean and unmarked - Very Good or better. The folding maps are all present and in good condition; the large folding map of India with pin-point perforations at fold-lines, else quite fresh and clean, Near Fine. Printed bookplate on verso of front flyleaf of the Oregon journalist Gwladys Bowen (1893-1991), with brief pencil gift inscription dated 1974.

The third of three London editions, all in the same year (1896). The book is actually a collection of five separate expeditions made by Younghusband over the course of a decade. The first, made in 1884 when he was barely twenty-one years old, was a two-month journey from Rawalpindi north to the Kulu Valley and the Rhotang Pass "in search of the memory of his uncle, Robert Barkley Shaw" who, some twenty years earlier, had become "the first European to enter the city of Kashgar and in so doing had become one of Younghusband's boyhood heroes" (see HOWGEGO III:1021ff).

Price: $450.00

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