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BLACKWELL, Eric : "Cairo to Bagdad". An Album of 125 Small Snapshot Photographs Taken on the Keeling Expedition Which Constituted the First Motor Crossing of the Desert from Damascus to Baghdad

No Place No Date, 1919

An oblong album, containing the photographs mounted in groups, all captioned or identified, on the rectos of the album leaves,. The album is bound in World War I aircraft fabric, and has two silhouette images on the front cover, including one of one of the Model T Fords which carried out this historic crossing of the desert. A loose envelope contains 7 loose photographs and a typewritten account of the journey, as well as correspondence relating to the loan of photographs for a magazine article. The expedition preceded the well-known efforts by the New Zealand Nairn brothers, which resulted in the establishment of the overland mail between Damascus and Baghdad.. An article in Aramco-World July-August 1981: the following paragraph refers: The first Damascus-to-Baghdad crossing by motor vehicle had been made just the year before Rose arrived. Now a weekly mail service route, established by Norman Nairn, a British ex-army officer, and his brother, linked the two great dries (See Aramco World, July-August 1981). The Nairn drivers were desert veterans who steered by the old landmarks, but whose vehicles left intermittent trails of tire- tracks. For safety from bandits, the Nairns developed an elaborate network of subsidies, amounting to one-third of the mail revenues; the subsidies were paid out to the Bedouin tribes through a well-connected Baghdad merchant." Pictorial material relating to this little know epic journey is of the utmost rarity

First Edition

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