Born into Essex landed gentry, Cox decided on military a career, graduating from Sandhurst in 1884. He joined the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) and went to India where he quickly learned Hindustani before starting Arabic and Persian. Following a well-trodden path for imperial administrators he decided to become a ‘politico’, and was appointed temporary assistant political resident in British Somaliland Protectorate at Zeila. At this point in his life he was ‘devoted to his studies of bird life, Somali clans and conchology’ (Graves 1941: 33). In 1899 Curzon offered Cox the position of political agent and consul at Muscat. This was the making of him; he honed his diplomatic skills during a period of tension with the French in the Gulf and established an influence over the Sultan of Muscat that continued when in 1904 he was promoted to acting political resident in the Persian Gulf and consul-general for southern Persia. It was during this period that Cox, following on from earlier travellers in Oman, James Wellsted, Colonel S.B. Miles, and the Dutch missionary Samuel Zwemer, performed two journeys in the interior. On the first he started out from Abu Dhabi, reaching Muscat via the desert oasis of Buraimi and the desert side of the Jebel Akhdar. The second, from Ras al Khaimah to Buraimi, returning to Muscat by steam boat via Sohar, involved transporting a chronometer along the caravan route in order to set the latter's longitude and latitude.