Lot 13
Churi, Joseph H.
Sea Nile, the Desert, & Nigritia
Auction: Africa and the Source of the Nile - Selections from the Library of a Scottish Gentleman | Wed 25 February from 10am | Lots 1 to 30
Description
Travels in Company with Captain Peel, R. N., 1851-2. With Thirteen Arabic Songs, as sung by the Egyptian Sailors on the Nile. London: published by the author, 1853. First edition, 8vo, original cloth, wood-engraved frontispiece, xii 331 pp., spine sunned and neatly repaired, spotting towards rear;
together with one other work (see note) (2)
Provenance
Africa and the Source of the Nile - Selections from the Library of a Scottish Gentleman
Footnote
Rare account of a Nile voyage from Cairo to Kordofan, central Sudan, written by a Lebanese Maronite author who travelled in the company of his pupil in the Arabic language Captain William Peel, son of the prime minster Sir Robert Peel and future recipient of the Victoria Cross for his heroism in the Crimea. In the preface Churi describes how he was sent to Rome to study at the College for the Propagation of Faith in Rome at the age of fourteen, before travelling to London and becoming an Arabic teacher. The lot sold with a first edition of Peel's account of the same journey, A Ride through the Nubian Desert (London: Longman, 1852), a rare variant bound in pink cloth and with 4 hand-coloured lithographic costume plates, all other copies traced being bound in blue cloth and containing a map frontispiece only for illustration. (In this copy the front endpapers have been renewed and the half-title is absent.)