The Indian Alps and How We Crossed Them: Being a Narrative of Two Years' Residence in the Eastern Himalaya and Two Months' Tour into the Interior by A Lady Pioneer [Elizabeth Sarah Mazuchelli] - 1876

London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1876. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. Quarto, xvii, 616 pp, with 10 chromolithograph plates (from drawings by the author), additional illustrations in the text, and a folding map. Original red cloth boards with beveled edges, decoration in gilt and black, all edges gilt. Corners rubbed, wear (small losses, tears) to spine ends. wear and possible old repairs to joints and hinges (common in this heavy book), but still a quite attractive and sound copy. Elizabeth Sarah Mazuchelli (who went by Nina) and her husband, British Army chaplain Francis Mazuchelli, lived in India for 17 years, beginning in 1858 in Calcutta and moving in 1869 to Darjeeling. From the first time she saw the Himalayas, Nina was smitten. She is said to have been the first western woman to see Mount Everest, and she wrote that it was "the dream of my childhood to see this nearest point of Heaven and Earth". But she wanted to see more and proposed an expedition into the Himalayas. Although her husband and friends all thought it was madness for a woman to embark on an expedition into unknown territory at high altitude, eventually Nina got her way. This book recounts the Mazuchellis two-month, 600-mile journey from Darjeeling along the Singalila mountain range toward Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas and back again. They were accompanied by some 70 servants who cleared paths, carried baggage, set up camp, cooked, etc., and Nina--encumbered by petticoats and corset--made most of the journey in a sedan chair carried on poles by four men. Towards the end of the journey, however, she was forced to walk, as they ran out of food and firewood and the servants were too exhausted and bruised to carry her. Although no great feats of mountaineering were achieved, this is an interesting and detailed narrative by a woman who, depsite the pampering, paved the way for other women to see the world's highest mountains as a place where they belonged. Baume (Sivalaya) 199. Neate M7.