Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Hi, Maryanne;

Did you ever read Barclay Raunkiaer's _Through

Wahhabiland on Camelback_? (Reprinted by

Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers in 1969,

Library of Congress catalog number 69-19719,

translated by Gerald de Gaury. Line drawings

by Raunkiaer himself.)

Raunkiaer was a Dane who travelled south

from Basra through Kuwait and deep into

the Arabian plateau to Bereidah and Riyadh,

then back to the coast near Hofuf and Ajer,

all in 1912. It's a very fun story.

Alas, he doesn't seem to have been a horseman

and has very little to say about the horses

he saw along the way. The journey also

"ruined his health" in a way that sounds

weirdly like Gulf War Syndrome and he died,

still a young man, in 1915.

Rankiaer specifically mentions a Major

General E. C. Rasmussem who was part of

a committee that the Royal Geographical

Society of Denmark put together to investigate

exploring the southern Arabian peninsula

in 1909. Could be the same guy.

Linda B. Merims

Massachusetts, USA