Journal of a Route Across India, Through Egypt to England in the Latter End of the Year 1817 and the Beginning of 1818

George Fitzclarence

John Murray, 1819

1st ed. Bound in later 1/4 leather over brown cloth boards.  Minor rubbing to spine leather.  Solid binding and cover.  Collated: xxv, 502, [1] pp.; with 12 plates (9 hand-colored), 7 maps and plans (including one large folding map of the Seat of War in India (19 total).  Scattered foxing, offsetting to pages opposite plates.  

George Fitzclarence, was a founding member of the Royal Asiatic Society, he elected president of Society in 1841.  Fitzclarence was the eldest son of King William IV (illegitimate). He served in France and Spain during the Napoleonic wars.  He later served as "aide-de-camp to the Marquis of Hastings, governor-general and commander-in-chief, in which capacity he made the campaigns of 1816-17 against the Mahrattas. When peace was arranged with the Maharajah Scindiah the event was considered of sufficient importance to send the despatches in duplicate, and Fitzclarence was entrusted with the duplicates sent by overland route. He started from the western frontier of Bundelkund, the furthest point reached by the grand army, 7 Dec. 1817, and travelling through districts infested by the Pindarrees, witnessed the defeat of the latter by General Doveton at Jubbulpore, reached Bombay, and quitted it in the cruiser Mercury for Kosseir 7 Feb. 1818, crossed the desert, explored the pyramids with Salt and Belzoni, descended the Nile, and reached London, via Alexandria and Malta, 16 June 1818. He subsequently published an account of his travels, which exhibited much observation and containing some curious plates of Indian military costumes of the day from sketches by the author." - DNB. Refs: Abbey Travel 519. Hilmy I, 233. Tooley 22