In Forbidden China.

A bright copy of the account of the journey through China, Tibet, and Mongolia, by Henri Marie Gustave d'Ollone (1868-1945).

D'Ollone's mission was specifically scientific in nature, with instructions to study the non-Chinese peoples and cultures of China, and the minorities that cohabited within the Chinese Empire. The expedition covered more than 8,000 km on horseback through Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu, Ningxia and Mongolia. He conducted geographical, archaeological, ethnographic and linguistic studies of those he met. In 1908 d'Ollone obtained an audience with the 13th Dalai Lama and remarked on his intelligence: 'He understood that the support of the European nations would be useful to him in resisting both China and England.'

He established the Arab conquest was not the driving force behind the development of Islam in China, and estimated the number of Muslims in China at 4 million in 1906.

First English edition; 8vo (23 x 16 cm); frontispiece, folding map, 128 photographic plates on 84 leaves, with half-title, small nick to pp11-12, otherwise clean and tight internally; publisher's gilt pictorial cloth, gilt lettering to spine and upper board, a fine copy; 318, [1]pp.

Yakushi (1994), D281b.