BEYOND THE CASPIAN

Published by Oliver and Boyd, London and Edinburgh, 1949. 1st Edition.  xx, 290 pages + 6 colour plates (including frontispiece) + 18 black and white illustrations on plate leaves (1 double page) + 1 colour map. Near fine red cloth boards with gilt lettering on spine and front board in a very good pictorial dust jacket.

"Douglas Carruthers, gold medallist of the Royal Geographical Society, explorer, naturalist, and collector, tells of his travels and hunting experiences over several years in the great deserts and mountain ranges of Russian Central Asia, and particularly of the animals and birds of which he was in search, many of which proved new to science. Although he was primarily interested in the natural history of the regions traversed, yet he conveys an intimate picture of those strange capitals at the back of the world, Bukhara and Samarkand, of the inhabitants of ancient Farghana, as fiery as the horses for which they are famous, of those who dwell by the mighty Oxus, of those who pasture over the high Pamirs." from dust-jacket blurb. [References: Czech, Asian p. 44