DIARY OF A JOURNEY THROUGH THE SINAI PENINSULA AND ARABIA IN 1914

First edition, one of a small number of copies produced for private circulation. Extra-illustrated copy, with two original photographs of the author atop a camel during the expedition mounted on the front and rear pastedowns. Publisher's original red cloth with titles in gilt to the upper board. Page edges untrimmed. Illustrated with 15 captioned black and white plates after the author's photographs, and with a large folding map at the rear. A very good copy, the binding square and firm with minor marking to the cloth and a touch of fading to the spine. The contents with a little toning to the endpapers, some light scattered foxing and a long closed tear to the map are otherwise in very good order.

An excellent extra-illustrated copy of this account of a trip to Sinai, Palestine and Transjordan, recounting the five-week expedition of Brockbank and his friend Hensman, during which they travelled 400 miles on camel and 700 miles on horseback. Setting off from Charing Cross in March 1914, the pair first arrived in Port Said, Egypt, subsequently travelling to Suez, and then overland along the west coast of the Sinai Peninsula to Mount Sinai and the monastery of St. Katherine. From there, they journeyed to Aqaba, Ain Kadis in the Wilderness of Zin, the Wadi el Arabah to Mount Hor and Petra, Kerak, before reaching Bethlehem and Jerusalem. A lively account of a remarkable trip through some of the same terrain covered just a month earlier in January and February 1914 by T.E. Lawrence and C.E. Woolley, when they were apparently working for the British military surveying team, operating under the guise of an archaeological survey.