Sabin 735.
Alexander had a remarkable forty-seven year career in the army of the EIC and the British Army both. He first saw service in the Burma War of 1824, then later, having in the interim transferred to the 13th Light Dragoons, with the Persian Army during the war with Russia in 1826. Subsequently he was in Portugal for the Miguelite War of 1832-4, A-D-C to D’Urban in the Kaffir War of 1835, and led an exploring party into Namaqualand and Damaraland, for which service he was knighted. After a period in Canada, and having risen to Lieutenant-Colonel, Alexander led his present regiment, the 14th Foot, in the Crimea, remaining there until 1856. His final active service was in New Zealand where he commanded the troops at Auckland in the Maori War. He is probably best remebered today for his rôle in saving and transporting Cleopatra’s Needle.
The DNB is somewhat cruel in remarking that “His singularly varied service furnished him with materials for a large number of volumes of a rather desultory kind.” He published twelve works in his lifetime including accounts of all of the campaigns in which he was involved and his explorations in Africa and North America, but also a life of Wellington and a description of the salvation of Cleopatra’s Needle. If the contents of the present work are anything to go by his output was far from “desultory”. Alexander is lively and informative on all aspects of life in the locations visited on this trip undertaken whilst unattached.
He planned well for his trip and having decided to visit the New World, “I communicated my intention to the Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, and to other literary and scientific individuals, and volunteered to execute commissions for them in America or the West Indies. I thus obtained a series of interrogatories to answer, and in collecting the information for myself, had my attention directed to other matters of great interest, which I might otherwise have omitted to notice.” As a result they ensure far from desultory accounts of Guiana, Barbados, Trinidad, Tobago, Jamaica and Cuba [with fascinating digressions of the slave trade] and an extensive tour of North America - up the Mississippi from New Orleans to Memphis, thence by wagon to Nashville, and by stage to Louisville and Cincinnati on his way East before heading from Canada. An exemplary travelogue.
The bookplates record the presentation of the volumes to Edward Hemphill, his later ownership inscriptions as Ensign and Lieutenant 69th Regiment to the front free endpaper of Volume II.