Account of Koonawur, in the Himalaya, etc.etc.etc: By the Late Capt. Alexander Gerard. Edited by George Lloyd. With a Large Map.

London: James Madden & Co, 1841. Full Description:

GERARD, Alexander. Account of Koonawur, in the Himalaya, etc.etc.etc.. By the Late Capt. Alexander Gerard. Edited by George Lloyd. With a Large Map. London: James Madden & Co., 1841.

First edition. Octavo (8 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches; 220 x 140 mm). xiii, [3], 190, [2], 195-306, 305-308, [xxvi, Appendix], [2, ads] pp. Although there are some skipped numbers in pagination, this collates complete. With the large folding map bound in after the contents. With the publisher's 2 page advertisement dated August 1841.

Publisher's original full brown cloth. Boards tooled in blind. Spine ruled in blind and lettered in gilt. Edges uncut and a few leaves unopened. Yellow coated endpapers. Some minor discoloration to cloth. Some splitting to cloth along the back edges out the spine. A few pages have been opened rough, including the half-title, but not affecting text. Map with some creasing to edges and two closed tears where it is bound in, with no loss. Previous owner's pencil inscription on front endpapers. Overall very good.

"Alexander Gerard was a Scottish army officer in India, and an early surveyor and explorer of the Himalayas... During the surveys in the Himalayas he ascended heights previously believed to be inaccessible, and penetrated into Tibet as far as the frontier pickets of Chinese would allow. Our earliest notions of the geological structure and remains of the Himalayan ranges come from his work." (Wikipedia).

"In the summer of 1817, accompanied by Dr George Govan (1787-1865), he embarked from Sabathu on the first of several expeditions to the Sutlej valley in the Himalayas, an area then relatively unknown to Europeans. His route book of this expedition, 'Journal of a survey from Soobathoo to Rarung, 1817', was published posthumously by his editor, George Lloyd, in 'Account of Koonawur, in the Himalaya' (1841). The eponymous text of this work, a descriptive account of the narrow strip of inhabited land straddling the upper Sutlej, was written by Gerard in 1831." (Oxford DNB).

HBS 69047.

$2,000.