Burton’s account was published a couple of years later as Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah. Although a valuable book it is not especially rare, so I seek to find copies a bit special. The one we currently offer is in a superb Zaehnsdorf red morocco binding for a Scottish business. Beautifully preserved, it is most unusual to find the Pilgrimage in a fine early binding.

It was some 25 years later before Burton returned to Arabia, this time to Midian in the northwest of the peninsula. He was sorely in need of money and was convinced he would find gold there and make a fortune. Alas for Burton, no gold was ever found, nor was there any silver, a metal Burton believed had a strange influence on him, to the extent that he would put silver coins on his eyes if they were fatigued from reading, or on his gout pains.

He did, nevertheless, bring back 25 tons of samples, and surveyed 18 ancient settlements. In many ways this was his most important Arabian exploration, if lacking the romance and adventure of the Pilgrimage. Our copy of the Gold Fields of Midian and ruined Midianite Cities, 1878, is completely unrestored in the original red cloth.