A Summer Ride through Western Tibet. by DUNCAN, Jane E - 1906

London: Smith, Elder & Co.,, 1906. Octavo. Original olive-green cloth, gilt lettered spine, untrimmed. 74 monochrome illustrations from photographs on 40 plates, illustrations in the text, folding coloured map of Jammu and Kashmir showing Duncan's route. Pale mark across lettering on spine, scattered foxing. A very good copy, with the publisher's slip pasted to the front free endpaper (informing booksellers that they should not offer a discount). First edition, first impression, presentation copy from the Scottish traveller Ella Robertson Christie (1861-1949), inscribed on the blank before the half-title: "Mary E. Haldane, May 1906, from E. C. of C." (Ella Christie of Cowden Castle, her home in Perthshire); and with a loosely inserted note in another hand: "From Miss Christie". The recipient may be Mary Elizabeth Haldane (née Sanderson, 1825-1925), mother of Elizabeth Sanderson Haldane, writer and suffragist, and paternal grandmother of the writer Naomi Mitchison. Ella Christie - described as "objective, articulate, and scholarly" (Robinson) - was the author of Through Khiva to Golden Samarkand (1925), is mentioned several times in the present work and is credited with nine photographic contributions; she also makes a rather splendid entrance: "Soon I heard the music, which had never completely died away, coming very near, and on looking round saw, to my astonishment, a lady walk into the bagh [garden] accompanied by the band and followed by an immense crowd. I was having tea and sent Aziz Khan to give my salaam and ask if she would join me; she came at once, and proved to be a countrywoman of my own on her way from Leh to Skardo. In coming down the hill she had fallen in with the procession, in which she was immediately made the leading figure and was immensely surprised, amused and delighted with her own dramatic entrance into Khapallu, and had no idea till I told her what it all meant" (p. 259). Jane Duncan (1848-1909) was a Scottish explorer whose "travels are full of delight... She was so exhilarated by the clear air and the abandonment of her side-saddle (she chose most daringly to ride astride, like men) that when she chanced upon Ella Christie one day - both treating their meeting in the emptiest corner of Asia as the most natural thing in the world - she chose not to accompany her but to carry on alone" (Robinson, p. 43). A fascinating association copy that links two intrepid women travellers of the early 20th century. See Howgego III C36 for Christie; Robinson, Wayward Women, pp. 40 & 43; Yakuzi D171.