1856 Handwritten Travel Diary Scotland Lakes Antique Prints Engraving Old UNIQUE

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1856 Handwritten Travel Diary Scotland Lakes Antique Prints Engraving Old UNIQUE:
$560.05

A genuine handwritten Victorian Travel Diary, complete as paginated by the author with 88 pages, many of them decorated with b&w engravings of the places he was visiting.
The first entry is dated \"Monday 16th June, 1856\" and finds him leaving Liverpool, for York. His journey then takes him to the Lake District and up into Scotland - Stirling, Edinburgh, and the Borders. Along the way, he is troubled by a sore which on the 13th August he discovers to be an infection of \"Guinea worms.\" He extracts several of varying lengths, one of a foot long, which \"completed the destruction of this nice little family party, and the foot began rapidly to heal!\" He is back in England in early September, returning to Liverpool via Ripon on the 12th. He did much of the journey by Rail, and Steamer.
The author is not named, but it is almost certainly Gilbert Cowie. I purchased the item along with other books and diaries, and a painting all seemingly from this source. Cowie was born in 1827, and in the 1841 census is described as \"an East India Merchant.\" He married Lena Reeves in 1857, the year after this diary, and a diary of the 1860s shows them to be first in India, then in Europe. Cowie died in 1876, in Cheshire.
This is a unique record of a Victorian journey, written in ink in a neat hand, and delightfully illustrated. 3 full-page engravings (one in colour), a small map, and many smaller prints on most of the sheets. Sometimes (in Richmond, and Borrowdale for example) he uses illustrated writing paper which has been bound in with the other sheets.
Size: The covers measure approx. 26cms x 21cms.Condition:Half-leather covers bumped at the corners and marked. Some foxing. Page 44 has I think lost its engraving. But nothing else to detract from a wonderfully complete record. The book is firm and holding well.
Free postage in the UK. £8.00 to Europe, £12.00 to USA etc.I have other antique items - prints, books, maps, etc. - in my shop. Please see my other items.