Manuscrit autographe inédit et complet "Notes sur les Indes"

Unpublished and complete autograph manuscript, dated and signed, comprising 775 pages (misnumbered 1-567, 567-774), written by the Vicomte Edmond de Poncins between 12 September 1891 and 12 June 1892. Small folio (21 × 34.5 cm). Contemporary half forest-green shagreen over corners, spine with five raised bands ruled in black and decorated with blind-tooled panels with central gilt fleurons, green paper-covered boards with blind-tooled borders, comb-marbled endpapers, top edge red, gilt title to spine. The author's engraved bookplate, depicting a tent pitched beside a baobab tree, is mounted at the head of the front pastedown.

The journal opens on 12 September 1891 with Poncins's departure from Marseille aboard the Peï-Ho, a steamer of the Messageries Maritimes, travelling in the company of the Governor of Obock and a British general serving as Inspector of Cavalry in India. Kept as a daily record, it follows his journey across the Indian subcontinent with remarkable continuity: Bombay, Poona, the Buddhist cave temples of Karlee and Ajanta, Gujarat and crocodile hunting along the Sabarmati, Rajasthan - Udaipur, Jaipur and Alwar - Delhi and Agra, the Ganges Valley as far as Calcutta, an extended hunting expedition in the Sundarbans, and finally Assam, where he hunted buffalo, rhinoceros and tiger from elephant-back, before returning through the Punjab to Karachi and sailing back to Marseille on 12 June 1892. Rich in natural history observations and ethnographic detail, the narrative is further enlivened by numerous hunting episodes and encounters with the Indian princely elite, notably at the court of Udaipur.

A hunter, geographer and photographer, the Vicomte Edmond de Montaigne de Poncins (1866–1937) devoted his life to exploration in Asia and Africa. This Indian journey immediately preceded his crossing of the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush in 1893, from Samarkand to Kashmir, placing him among the first Western travellers to explore these high mountain regions. The expedition earned him the Société de Géographie's Grand Silver Medal in 1895 and later gave rise to Chasses et explorations dans la région des Pamirs (Challamel, 1897). In 1897 he accompanied Prince Henri d'Orléans on his mission to Emperor Menelik II between Djibouti and Addis Ababa, an expedition recounted by the Prince in Une visite à l'empereur Ménélick, where Poncins is mentioned by name among the members of the party. He also published Note sur le gros gibier de nos colonies (Mame, 1913).

Apparently unrecorded, this manuscript constitutes the earliest surviving account of Edmond de Poncins's travels and sheds valuable light on the formative years of an explorer who would soon rank among the leading French travellers in Central Asia and Africa at the close of the nineteenth century.