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An artist in the Himalayas.

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First American edition by the British illustrator and painter Arthur David McCormick (1860-1943), recounting his experiences as a member of the 1892 Karakoram expedition under the leadership of the English politician, art historian, and mountaineer Martin Conway (1856-1937). Conway’s Karakoram expedition proved to be a large-scale undertaking with considerable funding from scientific societies and his father-in-law, the American journalist Manton Marble (1834-1917). In the course of their expedition, his large party surveyed the Baltoro glacier and the region around K2, as well as ascending Pioneer Peak on Baltoro Kangri, ‘which at 6890 metres may have constituted an altitude record at the time’ (ODNB).

Upon their return to England, Conway published a weighty tome (of more than 700 pages) entitled Climbing and exploration in the Karakoram-Himalayas (1894), with illustrations provided by McCormick, a graduate of the Royal College of Arts who had been specifically employed by Conway (himself professor of art at University College, Liverpool) as artist-in-resident for the expedition. The following year, McCormick published his own, significantly shorter and less formal narrative of the expedition, intended not as great literature, but in order to ‘give an idea of the picturesque aspect of the expedition rather than of the geographical portion’.

This copy is the first American edition of McCormick’s narrative, published in the same year as the first English edition. It contains numerous smaller illustrations which are reproduced from sketches made by McCormick during the expedition, and also includes a large folding map of Kashmir by Stanford’s of London depicting the route Conway’s expedition took.

Yakushi M129.