Evenings in My Tent; Or, Wanderings in Balad Ejjareed. Illustrating the Moral, Religious, Social, and Political Conditions of Various Arab tribes of the African Sahara.

London.: Arthur Hall, Virtue, & Co., 1854.. Full contemporary blond calf by Riviere with his stamp 'Bound by Riviere' to front free endpapers verso, boards with triple gilt rules with floral corner pieces, banded spines with gilt decoration and green and honey leather labels with gilt titles, board edges with gilt tooling, turn-ins tooled in blind, marbled endpapers, marbled edges.. 2 vols. 8vo. (194 x 128 mm).. Colour lithograph frontispiece and printed title to each vol., vol. 1 with 3 leaves of contents, leaf with list of illustrations and preface, and Davis' text illustrated with 12 full-page plates (2 in colour) and fifteen text vignettes; printed text in English with occasional inserted Arabic and Hebrew words, printed music at the end of vol. 1. [PROVENANCE: Unidentified armorial bookplates with the initials 'E. K.' and the motto 'Loyal en Tout' to front pastedowns; additional stamp in red 'R. C.' to bookplates]. A very good copy of the Reverend Davis' scarce Evenings in My Tent.The Reverend Nathan Davis (1812 - 1882) was a missionary, eccentric, traveller and archaeologist and spent many years at Tunis in North Africa. He is known in particular for his literary works and the excavations he undertook at Carthage and Utica on behalf of the British Museum. The present work is notable for the extensive detail Davis provides on social customs, history, religion and personalities.'The information detailed in these volumes, has been collected during a period of six years - from 1846 to 1850 [sic] ... In his wanderings, the author's aime has been to gather materials, to enable him to exhibit the condition of various tribes, inhabiting one of the most interesting portions of Africa ... by allowing them - whenever practicable - to be the exponents of their own character, whether moral, religious, social or political.' (Davis writing in the Preface).