DAY (Francis).
The Land of the Permauls, or Cochin, its Past and its Present.
A startlingly comprehensive description of Kochi in the mid 19th century. The author, a surgeon and medical officer to the government of the Rajah of Cochin, provides a number of especially detailed chapters on the fauna of the state. He later become a celebrated ichthyologist, publishing several books on the fish of India and Burma.
From the library of Colonel S. B. Miles (1838-1914). The bookplate reads “Presented by - Mrs. Miles in Memory of her Husband, the late Col. Samuel Barrett Miles, 1920.”
Miles was an extraordinary figure. His first appointment in Arabia was as Resident at Aden in 1867; he was later made Agent and Consul at Muscat before being promoted Consul General, first at Bagdad then at Zanzibar. He is best known for the remarkable work The Countries and Tribes of the Persian Gulf (1919), which was published posthumously by his widow from an extensive archive of notes, “many of which were jotted down on odd bits of paper as he [Miles] rode through the desert on his camel”. The book remains an authority on Omani history and provides a storehouse of knowledge for any reader interested in the Persian Gulf.
