1786.b.33, 1

Imprint: Glenalla [Quebec], January,1862.

Folio, half-leather with red cloth boards, measuring 420 x 380 mm; two volumes bound in one; 49 pp., 35 pp; prints mounted one to a page (verso only), with a single leaf of letterpress description accompanying each image. It is not known how many copies of this work were produced, although it is almost certainly a private publication and issued in very limited numbers (the place of publication, 'Glenalla,' refers not to the locations of that name in Scotland and Ireland, but to the Douglas summer residence at Beauport, near Quebec). The letterpress accompanying the photographs contains contributions from James Douglas senior and junior, Naomi Douglas and Miss MacDonald.A small portrait photograph is pasted down onto the titlepages of both volumes, and shows James Douglas M.D., his son (also James) and the latter's wife Naomi. The elder James Douglas (1800-1886) was born in Brechin and qualified as a physician in Edinburgh. He practised in India and Honduras before settling in America in 1824, but was forced to flee that country after clandestinely obtaining corpses for dissection and thereafter established himself in Quebec in 1826. He became a major figure in Canadian medicine in the 1830s and in the following decade was a pioneer figure in the treatment of the mentally ill in his asylum at Beauport. Douglas suffered from respiratory disorders and from 1850 travelled extensively in Egypt, Italy and Palestine, returning with numerous artefacts, a number of which are held in the museum of the Université Laval in Quebec and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Unsuccessful speculation led to the dissipation of his fortune and in 1875 he left Canada to live with his son James in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, where he spent the remaining years of his life. James Douglas the younger (1837-1918) had originally intended to enter the church, receiving theological training in Edinburgh and Canada, but was not in the end ordained. Instead he studied medicine, with a view to entering into partnership with his father, but was again diverted, this time into the mining business. No biographical information has been traced on Miss MacDonald, who also accompanied the party (perhaps as companion to Mrs Douglas) and selections of whose journal are quoted from time to time. It is clear, however, that this was her first experience of foreign travel, since in the text at print 2, she refers to being 'only accustomed to life and scenery in Canada'. Plate 13 of the second volume of the work contains an interesting description of Douglas' working method and some of the problems inherent in photographic work in hot climates, as well as making it clear that it was the younger man who undertook the photographic work: 'The photographs of Philae were taken on our return, all those made on the island during our upward trip proving to be failures, when too late to remedy the mischief. The rapidity with which we moved must account for the defects which are so manifest in many of the pictures. Photography being quite a subordinate object with us, we never left the beaten tract nor did we ever delay an hour for the mere purpose of taking a view. Hence there are wanting to the collection a few interesting monuments and landscapes, which we either visited at night, or to the negatives of which some accident happened after we had passed the spot. From the same cause the light and shade in many is defective, — it being impossible to select the exact time of day most suitable for taking the picture. When some object on the bank attracted our attention and was thought worthy of being taken, I left the dahabieh in the small boat with a couple of men, made the picture and had often a long row to overtake the rest of the party, who in the mean time had dropped a mile or two down the stream. At other times we pulled for hours in advance of the dahabieh in order to gain time for taking a picture before evening set in. Thus unavoidable defects and omissions occur, which would not have been the case had we travelled for no other purpose than that of making a complete collection of Egyptian photographs. Below Cairo every attempt to succeed proved fruitless owing to my inexperience. The collection therefore gives a most inadequate idea of the architecture of modern Egypt. I accordingly confined myself almost exclusively to the photography of the old remains, it being impossible to do justice to every feature of the Nile during one trip. Of almost all the monuments we therefore selected that view which would give the best idea of the whole, and there are few of any consequence which are not represented. We employed the simplest of the wax paper processes, which is preferable on several accounts. In the first place, the sensatized [sic] sheets keep good for some length of time. We therefore prepared every evening as many papers as we were likely to need next day; put them carefully into a portfolio, and transferred them from the portfolio to the frame in a tomb or in the dark chamber of a temple. Thus the only apparatus we required to take with us each day was a folding camera, a tripod stand and the portfolio, all of which one of our sailors easily carried. But the great advantage of the paper process is the absence of ether or other volatile substances, which make the employment of collodion in Egypt almost impossible, and most painful from the rapid evaporation caused by the intense heat and dryness of the climate.'For further information on the life of James Douglas senior, see 'Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online' at http://www.biographi.ca. For a biographical memoir of his son, see Hugh Hornby Langton, 'James Douglas. A memoir' (privately printed, Toronto, 1940).