An important work on the British exploration of the Ottoman Middle East, arguing for the Euphrates as a new trade route between Britain and India. Privately printed on the advice of Sir Robert Gordon and Sir Stratford Canning, it was distributed to persons of influence and helped win Chesney the command of the official survey, undertaken from 1835 to 1837.
Chesney first became aware of the Euphrates as a potential trade route when he came across Thomas Love Peacock’s questionnaire, sent to British consuls in the region, comparing it to the Red Sea route. Standing “four feet nine inches tall, frequently rejected in love, and anxious to rescue a stalling military career, [he] decided to answer the questions by an assiduous on-the-spot survey of both options, which might give him fame. In 1830, he examined the northern Red Sea; he then travelled through Syria to Baghdad, which he reached in January 1831.” (Parry, p.119).
Reports… draws on those surveys, providing a general outline of the river (focusing on the section from Hit to the Shatt al-Arab), a more detailed account of important features and obstacles, and comments on the principal towns and tribes. It also includes ten appendices, which cover, inter alia, the distances and time required for boats descending the river, the time required to cross the Syrian Desert and notes on the arming and equipment of the steamer. The final section is an additional memoir on Chesney’s second visit to the upper part of the Euphrates in March 1832.
Scarce. LibraryHub locates two copies, at the British Library and the Royal Society Library. OCLC adds eight more, at the London Library, Leiden University, Columbia, the Newberry Library, the New York Public Library, Pennsylvania State University, the Southern Methodist University and Yale.
Atabey, 233; Not in Wilson or Macro (who both list the account of the later expedition); Parry, J., Promised Lands: The British and the Ottoman Middle East, Princeton, 2022.
