Salween, by Ronald Kaulback

First edition of Kaulback's account of the eighteen-month expedition into South Eastern Tibet that won him the prestigious RGS Murchison Grant, this copy inscribed; "Ted Flintoff - and bless you for going to so much trouble to find a book so long out of print, yours Ronald Kaulback, October 1987". Uncommon inscribed. "The author and [John] Hanbury-Tracy entered Tibet from Upper Burma in the early summer of 1935, and they turned back and emerged by the Lohit river at Sadiya in Assam, after spending 18 months and travelling 3000 miles across the unknown hinterlands of east Tibet" (Yakushi). Their aim was to find the sources of the Salween and to map its drainage area, but the tense political situation prevented them from reaching the source. Hanbury'-Tracy's extravagant beard causing him to be suspected of being a Russian spy, "but they did manage to map a large tract in southeastern Tibet and did some natural history collecting besides" (Troelstra). Hanbury-Tracy published his own account under the title Black River of Tibet. Troelstra, pp. 235-6; Yakushi K78 Octavo. Original black cloth, title gilt to spine. With the original printed cloth pictorial jacket. Halftone frontispiece and 15 other similar plates, 3 maps, the general area map at the rear coloured and folding, line drawings of Tibetan paintings as chapter headers. Cloth very slightly mottled.