[HALLETT, HOLT SAMUEL]. A Thousand Miles on an Elephant in the Shan States. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, MDCCCXC. [1890].
FIRST EDITION. Cloth-bound; hardcover; octavo (23 x 14 x 4 cm); pp. xxxvi, 484, 24. English text. Bound in publishers' original brown elephant-skin pattern cloth; spine lettered in gilt; front cover lettered in black and with a pictorial colour label; black coated endpapers; half-title; 8 folding maps; numerous line drawings in the text; 24-page publishers' catalogue at rear. Condition: VERY GOOD. Collated complete. Binding tight and secure, the hinges and joints intact. Covers well-preserved with a couple of small bumps to the edges and minor rubbing to spine ends. Interior largely clean with a few small closed tears to page edges, the first leaf of preface with an obvious paper repair. Without previous ownership markings. A handsome copy of a scarce title.
Notes: Rare first edition of Holt S. Hallett's fascinating account of his journey through Siam and Burma, which showed there was indeed a viable route for his proposed commercial railway to China. His important surveys filled large blanks in European maps of a region still "shrouded with that glamour which invests all little-known regions" (p. 9). Alongside anthropological observations, the intelligence of elephants is notably described in detail.
