Bailey Collection: Peking to Assam. F.M. Bailey 1911. Photographer(s): Bailey, Frederick...

Red half-leather bound album in sound condition measuring 200 mm x 245 mm, title as above stamped in gilt on front cover. The prints are mostly mounted three to a page, with pencilled captions beneath. The photographs themselves are small format contact prints, printed with a wide (approx. 15 mm) border; most are in poor condition, with considerable fading and chemical staining (enlarged versions of the majority of these prints can be found at Photo 1083/34). The negatives for this collection (with a few missing) survive in very curled condition. A set of modern duplicate film negatives can be found at Neg 1083/33, together with a further set of prints for 1-134, mounted on loose album pages, and a set of loose contact prints for most of the series. The album records the expedition made by Bailey in 1911 to discover whether the Tsangpo river in Tibet in fact formed one of the headwaters of the Brahmaputra. Bailey set out from England at the end of his home leave in January 1911, travelling on the Trans-Siberian Railway to Beijing, where he met up with his Tibetan servant and assistant Padambu at the beginning of March. They travelled to Hankow by rail and there embarked (23 March) on the Japanese steamer Tachimaru for the journey up the Yangtse. They left the river at Wanhsien on 6 April and travelling by sedan chair, arrived at Chengtu on 27 April and Yachou on 31 April. By 9 May Bailey had reached Tatsienlu (Kangting), where he remained for ten days, part of the time being spent in an unsuccessful hunting trip for takin, one of the rarest of game animals. On 6 June he left Batang and crossed into Tibet, negotiating a number of passes before moving southwards down the Salween Valley towards Menkong. At Ridong he turned north-west and on 20 June crossed the Irrawaddy-Brahmaputra watershed at the Zhasha La. Continuing on towards Shugden Gompa he crossed the Dzo La on 25 June. It was at Shugden Gompa that the expedition met with insuperable difficulties. This was tantalisingly close to the point where the Po Tsangpo joined the Tsangpo proper and Bailey felt a boiling point observation to establish altitude would indicate the probability or otherwise of a large falls on the river. The existence of such a falls would account for the discrepancy between the height above sea-level of the Tsangpo (9,000') when it disappeared in the mountains of south-east Tibet and the point where it debouched into the plains of Assam at only 500' above sea level. However, because of the unstable conditions in the area, the Dzongpön (district administrator), unwilling to take responsibility for Bailey's safety, refused to let him continue with his journey. Bailey was therefore forced to retrace his steps south to Drowa Gompa. He could then reach India by striking off south-westwards through the Mishmi country of Assam and heading for Sadiya, a station on the Brahmaputra. Although the Mishmis did not live up to their reputation as ferocious savages, this leg of the journey, carried out on foot through very difficult country, proved the most taxing section of the expedition. On 7 August he left the Mishmi country and entered that of the Kamtis, where he made the final leg of the journey to Sadiya by dug-out canoe on the Lohit river. A full account of the expedition can be found in Bailey's China—Tibet—Assam. A Journey, 1911 (London, 1945). The photographs in the album (which are not up to the standard of much of Bailey's work, possibly owing to the use of a smaller format) present a somewhat disjointed account. There is a disproportionate number of views of stations on the Siberian railway (Bailey notes that taking photographs of locomotives was one of the few antidotes to boredom during the journey), followed by numerous views on the Yangtse and a reasonable record of scenes up to the Tibetan border at Batang. Here the photographs come to an abrupt halt, with just a few prints (147-152) of scenes in the Mishmi country. The reason for this is unexplained.

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