A DESERT MARRIAGE

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 255, 12 July 1926, Page 4

A DESERT MARRIAGE

ROMANCE ENDS IN DIVORCE COURT By Telegraph.—Press Association Copyright. Paris, July 9. The romantic marriage of a French explorer to an American girl in the heart of the Gobi desert was revealed in a Divorce Court suit to-day, when Count de Lesdain asked for a dissolution of his marriage with Mabel Bailey. , , . Count de Lesdain in 1904 left Peking at the head of a mission to explore Tibet and Mongolia. Miss Bailey, disguised as a man coolie, attached herself to the caravan and only revealed her identity when the party reached the wilds, where Count de Lesdain learnt for the first time that there was a woman member of the expedition. Count de Lesdain, who is 23 years old, was so impressed with her courage and beauty that he proposed marriage, and the ceremony, was carried out by two Belgian missionaries at an oasis of the Gobi desert, lhe marriage was later notified to the French Consul at Peking where a child was born. The union was happy until 1918, when the husband entered a suit of nullity on the ground that the French Consul should have actually performed the ceremony or, alternately, they should have been married in accordance with the customs of. the country, which means in Hie Gobi desert that the bride should have been kidnapped or purchased. The Court decided that the marriage was null and void, but Miss Bailey and the child were entitled to the civil advantages a regular marriage would have entailed, as the bridegroom regarded the union as legitimate at the time.—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn.