Running to just 80pp but including a folding map, this copy is numbered 79, but the size of the edition is not specified.
It is an account of the author’s travels, via Gilgit, to take up a post as vice-consul in Kashgar – an old Silk Road trading post, now part of China.
The diary is bound in boards covered in a patterned fabric, now slightly warped and worn, which is described by the author on the printed presentation leaf as the “…stuff of which clothes are made in Central Asia”.
Harding goes on to state that “it is the first book, if I may be forgiven for calling it a book, to be published in this part of the world in any European language”.
No other copy is listed in auction records and this one sold at £1600.
