travel, natural history & scientific exploration bernard quaritch ltd · catalogue 1436 · mmxvii BERNARD QUARITCH LTD 40 SOUTH AUDLEY STREET, LONDON W1K 2PR +44 (0)20 7297 4888 [email protected] www.quaritch.com For enquiries about this catalogue, please contact: Mark James FLS ([email protected]) Illustrations: Front cover: item 4 (Niebuhr) Title vignete: item 23 (Speke) Rear cover: item 85 (Selby) Bankers: Barclays Bank PLC, 1 Churchill Place, London E14 5HP Sort code: 20-65-82 Swift code: BARCGB22 Sterling account IBAN: GB98 BARC 206582 10511722 Euro account IBAN: GB30 BARC 206582 45447011 US Dollar account IBAN: GB46 BARC 206582 63992444 VAT number: GB 840 1358 54 Mastercard, Visa and American Express accepted. Cheques should be made payable to ‘Bernard Quaritch Limited’ © Bernard Quaritch Ltd 2017 travel, natural history & scientific exploration bernard quaritch limited ∙ antiquarian booksellers since 1847 catalogue 1436 mmxvii CONTENTS The Middle East nos 1-18 Africa nos 19-28 Polar Exploration and Mountaineering nos 29-40 Asia nos 41-54 Australasia and The Pacific nos 55-60 The Americas nos 61-73 The Napoleonic Era nos 74-79 Europe and Russia nos 80-91 Index p. 162 Bibliography p. 163 Important notice: items marked with an asterisk (*) are subject to VAT if purchased by EU buyers the middle east A METRICAL CATALOGUE OF SYRIAC THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL WRITINGS, EDITED BY THE ‘LEARNED MARONITE’ ECCHELLENSIS 1. 'ABHDISHO' BAR BERIKHA, Metro- politan of Soba and Abraham ECCHELLENSIS, translator and editor. Ope Domini Nostri Jesu Christi incipimus scribere tractatum continentem catalogum librorum Chaldæorum, tam ecclesiasticorum, quam profanorum. ... Latinitate donatum, & notis illustratum ab Abrahama Ecchellensi. Rome: Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, 1653. 8vo (161 x 103mm), pp. 29, [3 (blank)], 270, [2 (blank l.)], [28 (indices)], [3 (errata)], [1 (blank)]; printed in Roman, Syriac, and Hebrew types; woodcut seal of the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, type-ornament headbands and tailpieces, woodcut initials; some variable spotting and browning; contemporary vellum, manuscript title and decoration on spine, manuscript pressmark at the foot, all edges sprinkled red; extremities very lightly rubbed, light traces of old labels on spine, otherwise a very good copy; provenance: early manuscript pressmark on upper pastedown. £1800 First edition. Described by The Catholic Encyclopaedia as a ‘learned Maronite’, Ecchellensis (1600- 1664) was born in Hekel (or Ecchel), a village on Mount Lebanon, and studied at the Maronite College in Rome. He then taught Syriac and Arabic at the Sacra Congregatio’s newly-founded Collegium Urbanum and also published a Syriac grammar Linguæ Syriacæ, sive Chaldaicæ perbrevis institutio ad eiusdem nationis studiosos adolescents (Rome: 1628). Shortly afterwards he moved to Paris, where he taught Syriac and Arabic at the Royal College from 1630 and also worked on the monumental Paris polyglot bible, Biblia Hebraica, Samaritana, Chaldaica, Græca, Syriaca, Latina, Arabica (Paris: 1629-1645). Following a quarrel with one of his fellow translators, Ecchellensis returned to Rome, where he resumed teaching in 1642, and, apart from a second residence in Paris between 1645 and 1653, he remained in the city until his death. This work is based upon the metrical catalogue of Syriac theological and ecclesiastical writings compiled by 'Abhdisho' bar Berikha, which is printed in Syriac in the body of the book with Ecchellensis’ Latin translation on the facing pages (pp. 1-125). This is followed by Ecchellensis’ notes (pp. 127-270), and indices of the Syriac and Latin works. BL, Catalogue of Seventeenth Century Italian Books, I, p. 3; Peignot, Répertoire bibliographique universel, p. 146; Ottino and Fumagalli I, 750. 4 BERNARD QUARITCH LAFFI’S RARE ACCOUNT OF HIS PILGRIMAGE TO THE HOLY LAND, FROM THE LIBRARY OF ‘PRINCE’ DEMETRIOS RHODACANAKIS 2. LAFFI, Domenico. Viaggio in Levante al Santo Sepolcro di N.S.G. Christo, et altri luoghi de Terra Santa. Bologna, Heirs of Antonio Pisarri, 1683. 8vo (143 x 89mm), pp. [xvi], 576; woodcut head- and tailpieces and initials, full-page woodcut of a monk embracing the True Cross on p. [xvi]; some light spotting and marking, short tear touching headline on Y5, quire 2E browned; early 19th- century Italian half roan over decorated-paper- covered boards, spine gilt in compartments, gilt morocco lettering-piece in one, others decorated with central gilt tools, all edges speckled blue, pink silk marker (detached); extremities slightly rubbed and bumped causing small losses, short splits on joints, nonetheless a very good copy; provenance: ‘Prince’ Demetrios Rhodocanakis (1840-1902, engraved armorial bookplate on upper pastedown; Catalogue des livres anciens et modernes composant la bibliotheque de feu Son Altesse Imperiale le prince Demetrius Rhodocanakis, Dario G. Rossi, Rome, 18- 30 January 1904, lot 1009). £1,750 First edition. Viaggio in Levante is a detailed account of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land undertaken in 1678-1679 by the priest, writer, and traveller Domenico Laffi (1636-c. 1700), who also undertook at least three pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela. The author left Bologna for the Holy Land on 1 October 1678 and sailed from Leghorn to Corsica. Thence he sailed to Sardinia, along the coasts of Algeria and Tunisia, to Malta, Crete and Cyprus before landing at Tripoli. His itinerary then took him to Byblos, Beirut, Sidon, Tyre, Acre, Nazareth, Sebastia, Nablus, Shechem, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Jaffa, Jericho, Hebron and Mount Lebanon. He returned to Leghorn via Cyprus. Tobler accurately describes Viaggio in Levante as useful (albeit inelegantly written). The first edition of the work is rare – when this copy was sold in 1904, it was characterised as ‘[b]el exemplaire de ce rare volume’ in the auction catalogue, and Anglo-American auction records only list three copies (including this) at auction since 1975. A second edition was published in Bologna by Costantino Pisarri in 1708. This copy was previously in the library of Demetrios Rhodocanakis of Chios, a wealthy Greek merchant who moved to London and became a British citizen. As David M. Nicol wrote in The Immortal Emperor: The Life and Legend of Constantine Palaiologos, Last Emperor of the Romans (Cambridge: 1992), the ‘Constantinian Order of St George was believed by its members to have been founded as the first of its kind by Constantine the Great in 312. Its history, conceived, born and nurtured entirely in the realm of fantasy, has given employment to countless forgers and title- BERNARD QUARITCH 5 seekers from the seventeenth century to the present day. The most industriously inventive of them in the nineteenth century was […] Rhodocanakis […] who […] styled himself His Imperial Highness the Prince Rhodocanakis. He was tireless in the pursuit and fabrication of evidence to support his claim to the Byzantine thrones and to his title of Grand Master of the Constantinian Order, publishing expensive and elaborate genealogical tables and a whole series of spurious documents to prove his point. Criticisms and reasoned refutation of his claims only spurred him on to wilder feats of ingenuity. The bubble of his pretensions was finally pricked with a panoply of evidence by the French scholar Emile Legrand, but not before Rhodocanakis had procured recognition of his nobility from the British Foreign Office, the Vatican and several chanceries of Europe’ (p. 120). Rhodocanakis assembled a large library which was particularly rich in works on travels in the Levant and Holy Land, such as this; it was was dispersed after his death in an auction that lasted for twelve days and comprised some 1877 lots. Röhricht 1178; Tobler, p. 113. POCOCKE’S CELEBRATED ACCOUNT FROM THE LIBRARY OF A MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY OF DILETTANTI 3. POCOCKE, Richard. A Description of the East, and some other Countries. London: W. Bowyer for the Author, [‘and sold by J. and P. Knapton, W. Innys, W. Meadows, G. Hawkins, S. Birt, T. Longman, C. Hitch, R. Dodsley, J. Nourse, and J. Rivington’ (I)], 1743-1745. Folio (412 x 254mm), 3 parts bound in 2 volumes, pp. I: [2 (title, verso blank)], vi (dedication and preface), [6 (contents and plates)], [2 (key to plan of Alexandria, bibliography and errata)], 310; II, i: [2 (title, verso blank)], xi (dedication, preface, contents, and plates), [1 (bibliography and errata)], 268; II, ii: vii (title, verso blank, contents, plates), [1 (errata and directions to the bookbinder)], 308; Roman and Greek types; engraved title-vignettes by H. Gravelot and C. Grinion after Gravelot, engraved dedication in II, I, and engraved headpiece by and after Gravelot; 178 engraved plates, maps, and plans numbered 1-32, 34-76 (no. 33 was never issued) and 1-103, by G. Child, G.D. Ehret, Sam Wale, T. Jeffreys et al. after Ehret, Jeffreys, et al., 6 folding, 5 double-page, and one double-page folding; woodcut head- and tailpieces, and initials; some light browning and offsetting, occasional light marking, a few ll. and plates with short, skilfully-repaired tears, bound without final blank l. I, 4K2; English late-18th-century full diced Russia gilt, boards with gilt borders of broad and narrow rules, board-edges gilt, turn-ins gilt with greek-key roll, spines gilt in compartments, lettered directly in 2, marbled endpapers, light-blue silk markers (that in vol. II detached), red- sprinkled edges; boards lightly rubbed, extremities a little rubbed and bumped causing minor losses on corners and spine ends, spines faded and with cracking on joints, one front flyleaf excised from each volume; provenance: Sir Edward Winnington, Bt (1749-1805, engraved bookplates on upper pastedowns; errata neatly corrected by an early hand [presumably Winnington’s] in I from p. 106 to p. 218, and in II, i from p. 3 to p. 43). £8000 First edition, demy folio issue. The traveller and cleric Pococke (1704-1765), was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and graduated BA in 1725, BCL in 1731, and DCL in 1733.