Map of Western Palestine from surveys conducted for the Committee Of Palestine Exploration Fund by Lieuts. C.R. Conder and H.H. Kitchener, R.E. . . . Special Edition Illustrating the Divisions of the Natural Drainage and the Mountain Ranges According to . . . Trelawney Sanders . . . 1882

London, Edward Stanford, 1881. Large colour-lithographic folding map (158 by 94cm) dissected into 30 segments, linen-backed and folding back into the original cloth-covered slip-case with printed label on the front; apart from light rubbing to front cover, in excellent condition. A wonderful copy of this Special Edition of the 'reduced' version of Conder & Kitchener's huge Map of Western Palestine, which consists of 26 sheets and is ordinarily found bound in atlas format. The present example of the map is heavily revised to illustrate the drainage of the Mountain Ranges in the eastern part of the map, "according to 'An Introduction to the Survey of Western Palestine' by Trelawney Sanders." Sanders did several adaptations of this map, one of which included ancient geographical information. This version of the map is particularly poignant because of the linkage between water resources, food production and settlement location. Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, was an Irish-born British Field Marshal and proconsul who won fame for his imperial campaigns and later played a central role in the early part of the First World War, although he died halfway through it. In 1874, at age 24, Kitchener was assigned by the Palestine Exploration Fund, to a mapping-survey of the Holy Land, replacing Charles Tyrwhitt-Drake, who had died of malaria. Kitchener, then an officer in the Royal Engineers, joined fellow Royal Engineer Claude R. Conder and between 1874 and 1877 they surveyed what is today Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, returning to England only briefly in 1875, after an attack by locals in the Galilee, at Safed.