Observations on the Passage to India

London: For W. Faden, J. Robson, and R. Sewell, 1783. First edition. Quarto (10 x 7 3/4 inches; 255 x 197 mm). xx, 110, [4, blank] pp. With two folding maps, including frontispiece.

Newer half calf over original marble paper boards. Contemporary red morocco spine label. Label lettered in gilt. Spine stamped in gilt. New endpapers. Previous owner's bookplate on front pastedown. Some mild foxing throughout. Previous owner's neat errata corrections in blue ink. Overall a very good copy.

James Capper was a British army officer and meteorologist... "He was educated at Harrow School and served thereafter in His Majesty's Train of Artillery in the East Indies, first as a soldier cadet and later as an officer. He was then for a while a free merchant in Bengal before becoming in 1768 a captain in the Madras army and in 1769 senior writer for the presidency of Bengal. He was repatriated on grounds of ill health after becoming unwell on active service but returned to India in 1773, when appointed the East India Company's commissary-general upon the coast of Coromandel, with the brevet rank of colonel... Capper was sent home with dispatches in early 1777 and remained in England until the autumn of 1778 when, to explore the feasibility of opening a new channel for transmitting intelligence between Europe and India, he returned to Madras by way of Aleppo, the Arabian desert, and Basrah. Details of his journey from India to England in early 1777 (via Ceylon and Suez) and his return journey in 1778-9 are contained in his Observations on the passage to India through Egypt and across the great desert, with occasional remarks on the adjacent countries and also sketches of the different routes (1783; 3rd edn 1785)." (Oxford DNB).

HBS 68665.

$2,750.