Picture frame with photograph of James Camille Samson

"The heat here is colossal!" notes the later imperial and royal legation councillor James Camille Samson on 5 December 1888. His ship has just docked in Aden. Samson is born in New York in 1856, and when he is two years old his parents move to Vienna. Samson has wandering in his blood. He wants to see and experience everything in the world that there is to see and experience: America, Lapland, Cairo, the Aegean, Spain, Palestine, Palmyra, and lastly India and Siam. On all of his journeys he stocks up great quantities of memories of the distances covered. Now, in 1888, he is on a diplomatic mission to Siam, with an intermediate stop in Port Said: "Egypt, which I have come to love so much, is again there, or better, 'I am there again!' [...] I stretch myself out on the sand and dream of the many beautiful days I have spent in Egypt." Then it's off to Southeast Asia. Samson’s lungs are in poor health; this will be his last great journey.